The Hanoi people prefer to eat their breakfast and sometimes other meals at street restaurants and the street vendors’ than classy, air-con restaurants. Most of them say traditional food tastes best in the street – the expensive restaurants only copy it in a clumsy way. That is why Vietnamese street food is popular not only among Vietnamese people but also foreign tourists.
To a real Hanoian, a decent breakfast has to be followed by a cup of Vietnamese coffee or bitter tea in one of the tiny, laid-back places in the Old Quarter where they get updated on daily news or get their shoes shined. Only after then does a new day really begin.