Hang Than Street

On a weekend morning at the top of Hàng Than Street, the smell arrives before the shops do. It is young green rice and pomelo blossom, drifting from a kitchen that opens onto the road. Next comes a soft thudding, as a baker presses one square mold after another into a wooden table. Inside, boxes of bánh cốm sit on the shelves, wrapped in banana leaf and tied with pale pink string. Bánh cốm is a square cake made from cốm, young green rice.

A tourism page for the Ba Đình area says the street is about 408 meters long, and it lies in Hanoi. It starts at Yên Phụ Road in the east. In the west it meets Hàng Đậu and Quán Thánh streets. Along the way it bends around the north side of Trúc Bạch Lake. The street is short and gently sloped, and it lies between the Old Quarter of Hoàn Kiếm and the French-built quarter of Ba Đình.

The name leaves no doubt about the old trade. Shops here once sold charcoal and coal, the fuel Hanoi kitchens relied on before gas. The newspaper Dân Việt reports that under French rule the street was called Rue du Charbon, which means the street of coal. In 1945, the name Hàng Than was restored.

When charcoal stopped being the main fuel, the goods on the street changed too. The same newspaper says that around the 1860s, the owner of house number 11 created bánh cốm. The smell of young rice stirred in a pan spread to the houses around it. A street that sold coal became a street of green rice cakes and wedding cakes.

Today, the Ba Đình tourism page describes Hàng Than as the center of bánh cốm in Hanoi. Besides the cakes, the shops put together whole wedding trays. A tray holds areca nuts, betel leaves, bánh cốm, bánh xu xê, tea and tobacco, all packed into a red box for the groom's family to carry to the bride's family.

Bánh cốm is what the street is known for. The Vietnam News Agency says the cake is made from green rice from still-young sticky rice, peeled mung beans, fresh coconut cut into strands, and lotus seeds. Pomelo blossom is added to bring out the scent. The young rice is stirred in a pan for about two hours, until it turns soft yet keeps its jade-green color. The mung beans are steamed and pounded smooth, then mixed with sugar and coconut for the filling. Each cake is pressed in a small square mold, with a green shell and a yellow center, then wrapped in glossy paper and tied with pink string.

The same agency adds that bánh cốm is a gift no wedding tray can do without in many Hanoi families. The green cake travels beside the red and yellow bánh phu thê. Together they make a pair of gifts that stands for the bond of a couple and a wish for 100 years together. A Hanoi newspaper judges Hàng Than bánh cốm to be a distinctive part of the capital's food culture, kept by many generations of families through recipes passed from hand to hand.

The street is a short ribbon of road from the Yên Phụ dike to Hàng Đậu, with the water of Trúc Bạch showing at its side. Along that ribbon, the smell of old coal fires has given way to the smell of green rice and pomelo blossom, the smell of weddings today. Hàng Than is a short street that keeps alive one cake that matters at a Hanoi wedding.