Portland restaurateurs lead two-week culinary adventure around Vietnam

Heading into Halong Bay on a 30-foot junk boat for a lunch of freshly caught seafood. The first bite was wonderfully crunchy and just a little salty.

In fact, if you didn't mind the skinny legs, you might not even have noticed that you were eating grasshoppers. After the grasshopper appetizer, there were choices of grilled goat teat or raw cobra heart.

This was just another typical meal in Vietnam, especially when you're traveling with Portland restaurateurs Lam Van and Elizabeth Nguyen, owners of Portland's Pho Van and Silk restaurants.

Last March, they led a group of seven couples, along with their favorite wine distributor, Holly Wing, on a two-week culinary adventure through Vietnam.

Starting in the French-influenced capital of Hanoi, we stopped in Halong Bay to the north; Hue and Ho An in central Vietnam; and finished in Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta. Along the way, Lam and Elizabeth made sure that the meals were a constant -- and sometimes startling -- highlight.

Northern Vietnam

Rooftop restaurant Highway 4 was our first foray into full-contact adventure eating. With crunchy grasshoppers, fried softshell crabs, spicy squid, baby fish and seasoned mountain vegetables, our first meal in Hanoi was one of our best.

Along with dinner, we sampled a variety of Vietnamese snake wines, which have the smoky taste of a weak Scotch and are essentially the same as Japanese Habu Sake -- with the addition of a fermented snake in the bottle. We also tried scorpion and cobra wine.

Seated on the floor under a teak trellis, with a Buddhist altar behind us and piles of Vietnamese delicacies in front of us, we felt alone in the mountains of northern Vietnam. But the snake wine can make it tough to get off the floor. (5 Hang Tre St., 84 43 926 0639, http://highway4.com)

After a day spent touring the Perfume Pagoda outside Hanoi, our second dinner was far more traditional, and one that Lam and Elizabeth were particularly excited about. We enjoyed a late-night dinner at Le Verticale, where we took over the entire third floor of an elegantly restored four-story French colonial villa. With wide plank floors, gentle candlelight and ultramodern dinnerware, the room could have just as easily been in a townhouse in Ile Saint-Louis in Paris as Hanoi.

Brittany native Didier Corlu started Le Verticale two years ago after several years as the executive chef at Hanoi's Sofitel Metropole. He has artistically melded his native French cooking with the rich flavors and ingredients of Vietnam to produce one of Hanoi's top restaurants. In fact, the first floor of the villa is an elaborate spice shop.

Our six-course tasting menu included wild prawns with spring roll and sweet and sour apple, Corlu's signature ocean escabeche, pan-fried duck liver foie gras with Daikon turnip and tamarind juice, red tuna with citronella and passion fruit, Didier's own "le Corlu" cheese and soft cake of chocolate and cinnamon. Each course was as artistically presented as it was exquisitely prepared. While we just enjoyed Didier's handiwork, he also offers cooking classes every Sunday. (19 Ngo Van So St., 84 43 944 6317, http://verticale-hanoi.com)

Central Vietnam

From Hanoi, we headed to Hue, where we toured the remains of the old Imperial Citadel. The palace, being restored, was badly damaged during the Vietnam War, and bullet marks scar much of the stonework.

At a Royal Hue dinner at Restaurant Royal Park, our entire group dressed in Vietnamese imperial costumes. Peter Bishop and Janet Williamson presided as the Emperor and Empress of the Court. While the "ancient banquet" was not the culinary highlight of our adventures, traditional song, dance and instruments, as well as the elaborate decorative presentation of the dishes, provided a glimpse of Vietnamese royal life 100 years ago. (38-43 Nguyen Sinh Sac St., Vi Da, 84 54 389 7202)

From Hue, we headed to the resort town of Hoi An, almost as famous for its tailors, who can produce virtually anything overnight, as it is for its beaches. Our group spent several hours at the Yaly tailor (47 Nguyen Thai Hoc, 84 510 391 4995), having suits, saris and caftans custom-made. Hoi An was the perfect place to relax before the excitement awaiting us in Saigon.

Southern Vietnam

On our first night there, we went to rooftop restaurant 3T Vietnamese Barbecue, which was teeming with young Vietnamese, occasional expatriates and a few other tourists. The roof deck has a retractable roof, and every table has its own small propane-operated grill.

For the first course, we grilled seasoned boar, venison and goat breast to our liking, and then finished our skewers with fermented tofu dipping sauces. While the goat was a little chewy, the venison was absolutely delicious. Charred fresh okra made for a crispy side dish. Smoke engulfed the open-air restaurant, adding further ambience, and heat, to Saigon's tropical humidity. The meat course was followed by shrimp, which were brought out skewered alive, wiggling and ready to grill. With plenty of ice-cold Vietnamese beer, we spent hours enjoying the smoky rooftop. (29 Ton That Thiep, District 1, 84 83 821 1631)

We also spent a day on the famous Mekong Delta, which has been the scene of so many American movies about the Vietnam War. Today, it is a busy commercial waterway and site of fish farming. We toured several of the smaller islands in the delta and sampled the local coconut candy and rice wine.

Returning from the delta, we had our final dinner in Ho Chi Minh City at the Quan An Bistro, which offered a more traditional colonial Vietnam setting, in stark contrast to most of the city's sleek modern restaurants. But the food offered the same rich diversity of tastes and textures that are one of the hallmarks of Vietnam.