Garden Restaurant

Description:

• The Garden Restaurant is a low-luxe, authentic Vietnamese restaurant that attracts a few tourists (and small tour groups) in the know. With cool courtyard seating and cozy inside dining, this is a good place to try real Hanoi cuisine -- stir-fries and roast dishes, as well as curries and specialties like whole fried river fish or "drunken shrimp," a dish of live prawns cooked in flaming rice whiskey and put under a cover to simmer (they flip and flop like crazy, and when they stop moving you know the dish is done). Bring friends and settle in for a long repast. The young waitstaff is eager to practice their English and aim to please. They have set menus for $6 (£3.35) that include soup, spring rolls or another appetizer, and two small entrees with either rice or vermicelli noodles.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Recommended 2010