Max McFarlin (from Arkansas, USA) is a famous blogger in the world travel community and owns a YouTube channel with more than 630,000 followers. Max has been in Vietnam for more than 4 years and currently lives and works mainly in Ho Chi Minh City.

On his personal channel, the American blogger regularly shares videos about street food in provinces and tourist destinations across Vietnam that he has had the opportunity to visit.

Most recently, Max spent time visiting Hanoi . This is also the time when the weather in the North is cold, so the American guy decided to make this surprise trip because he wanted to enjoy many delicious winter dishes in the capital. In particular, he also revealed his favorite dish, not hesitating to travel more than 1,600km from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi to eat. That is cartilage rib porridge.

Western tourist from Ho Chi Minh City travels to Hanoi, enjoying many delicious winter dishes (Screenshot)

To enjoy the authentic Hanoi-style rib porridge, Max was taken by his Vietnamese friend Lylla to a small restaurant on Hang Dieu Street, Hoan Kiem District. This is also a familiar dining address for many people in the Old Quarter and foreign tourists when traveling to the capital.

The restaurant has a rather narrow space, customers are served right on the sidewalk with a few plastic chairs already set up. Both of them arrived at the restaurant early but there were already many customers lining up, waiting to enjoy the hot cartilage porridge here.

At the restaurant, Max and Lylla ordered two full servings of cartilage porridge, served with fried breadsticks and shredded pork floss. After just a few minutes of waiting, the staff brought them two bowls of smooth, full porridge.

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Cartilage rib porridge is a popular but popular dish in Hanoi, often enjoyed in the afternoon (Photo cut from clip)

When enjoying, Western guests also showed that they were gourmets no less than Vietnamese people when they sprinkled chili powder and ground pepper to enhance the flavor of this popular porridge.

Max revealed that he likes eating rib porridge because it has the taste of pork ribs that have been simmered for a long time. He also likes eating porridge that is soft, although many people do not like it. In addition, in his opinion, rib porridge is best eaten when the weather is cold, below 10 degrees Celsius.

“I don’t know how to describe it, but it has a very special aroma. I also really like ribs because I’ve eaten them since I was a kid. So I like to eat them this way, like butter sauce or baby porridge,” the American YouTuber commented.

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Max was excited to enjoy the famous cartilage rib porridge in Hanoi's Old Quarter, constantly exclaiming because it was delicious (Photo cut from clip)

He also shared with his friend how to eat porridge like Vietnamese people so that his hands would not get hot or burned when holding the bowl.

After finishing the meal, Max and Lylla continued to move to another location. The Westerner admitted that he had planned what dishes to enjoy when traveling to Hanoi in the winter. And he was very excited about the new delicious dishes that he knew for the first time.

In addition to cartilage porridge, on this trip, Max also had the opportunity to enjoy some delicious winter dishes in the capital such as sticky rice cake, banana cake, etc. He was also delighted to taste some Hanoian gifts for the first time such as pineapple ginseng tea, purple sticky rice yogurt, etc.

Phan Dau