Friends pull stools up to a table on Kim Long street, and plates of bánh bèo arrive in little ceramic saucers, each rice cake topped with dried shrimp and crispy pork skin. Huế cooking keeps the small, careful portions of its royal kitchens, so lunch becomes many little plates passed around and talked over.
After the meal, the Perfume River curves past the walls of the Imperial City and on to the tower of Thiên Mụ Pagoda. Spring and summer are warm and mostly dry, and heavy rain arrives from September to December. A Local Friend can take you into their own corner of the city, where the stall owner, the pagoda and the neighbors all have names.
