Bún Riêu Cua Nuoc - Ly Quoc Su VND20000

Absolutely the best tasting dish I've had in Vietnam!

The rich crab broth is liberally flavoured with fried shallots and topped with a generous scoop of crab roe pate which looks like a mixture of crab roe and residue from the ground up crabs.

Because of the fried shallots and the shellfish, it bears striking similarities to the Hae Mee prawn noodles of Malaysia.

Apart from the soup, the toppings included puffy fish cakes, a boiled pork sausage a bit like boudin blanc or weisswurst, but studded with sliced pig ears, beansprouts and water spinach.

With much gesturing and repeating "mot soup, mot no soup" ("mot" is 1 in Vietnamese), the lady eventually said, "mot nuoc, mot kho". I nodded my head wildly agreeing, since i knew "nuoc" meant water or liquid, and from the beef jerky stalls with Bo Kho signs, I presumed "kho" meant dry! (The probably mean "bowl") As my reward, I was presented with a bowl of bún riêu cua kho with a sprinkling of peanuts. The lady even showed me how to squeeze lime over it, and add as much chilli shrimp paste as I liked. The dry version was also moistened with some crab broth, but with so little liquid, the crab paste made the sauce really intense. Amazingly good!