Growing up in a small town in northern England, Graham Holliday wasn't keen on travel—until a picture of Vietnam sparked a curiosity that propelled him halfway across the globe. Traveling through the back alleys and across the boulevards of Hanoi—where home cooks set up grills and stripped-down stands, serving sumptuous fare on blue plastic furniture—Holliday risked dysentery (or worse) to discover a culinary treasure-load that was truly foreign and unique. Here Holliday shares every bite of the extraordinary fresh dishes, pungent and bursting with flavor, which he came to love in Hanoi, Saigon, and the countryside. A fellow intrepid traveler, Anthony Bourdain shares his own impressions of the region in his foreword.