NYCReview
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
Hanoi House
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Updated January 3rd, 2022
Circa 2017, it took a lot of planning to score a table at Hanoi House. This was the kind of place you had to set alarms on your phone for, somewhere you’d have to walk in at 5pm and put your name down before wandering around Tompkins Square Park for an hour or two.
Now, you still probably can’t walk in at 8pm on a Friday with six people—but it’s easy to get a reservation at Hanoi House with a bit of planning. That’s important, because this restaurant serves some of the best Vietnamese food you’ll find in NYC.
We’re especially fond of the small plates like the pork summer rolls with layers of crunchy texture (fried onions in the middle, crisp cucumbers and lettuce, and crumbled peanuts in the hoison sauce for dipping). The papaya salad with pig ears comes with a substantial amount of the crackly centerpiece (overzealous crispy pork organ fans will rejoice), but the dish is super balanced and comes packed with so much watercress, parsley, and papaya that you’ll always get a taste of everything with each bite.
The phở at Hanoi House is rich and deep in flavor, but what sets this bowl apart from the rest of the NYC greats is the amount of parsley in the soup and the pickled garlic on the side. We’d like to add that combination of ingredients to everything we cook at home, and that’s one of the main reasons why we’ll keep coming back here. A cauldron of simmering beef bones, garlic, ginger, star anise, and cinnamon just won’t fit into any of our studio apartments.
photo credit: Noah Devereaux
Gather your friends and reserve a table at Hanoi House, either inside or outside on the sidewalk patio that always feels like a phở-powered St. Marks party. Save the wandering around Tompkins Square Park for another time.