Eternal noodles: Obama ‘bun cha’ table encased in Vietnam

Bun Cha Huong Lien restaurant, since dubbed “bun cha Obama”, shot to stardom in 2016 when the then-US leader took a break from official duties on a Hanoi visit to enjoy a $3 bowl of pork noodles with fried spring rolls with globetrotting chef Anthony Bourdain.

Now customers are thronging to the hotspot for a taste of that famous evening.

“I’m very happy to sit near the table where President Obama once sat because I love Obama very much,” office worker Tran Dinh Ha told AFP during the busy lunch rush.

Bun Cha Huong Lien restaurant shot to stardom in 2016 when Obama took a break from official duties on a visit to Hanoi to enjoy a bowl of pork noodles and fried spring rolls with globetrotting chef Anthony Bourdain

Pictures of Obama and Bourdain’s budding bromance over dinner — filmed for the chef’s CNN series “Parts Unknown” — quickly went viral, and now plaster the walls of the simple joint in Hanoi’s leafy Old Quarter.

Business has boomed ever since the presidential pork dinner.

But the owner insists she isn’t dining out on the Obama fame and has resisted offers from customers wanting to buy the table, instead freezing the dinnertime tableau for posterity.

“I think it’s appropriate to preserve the memory of Mr Obama,” owner Nguyen Thi Lien told AFP, as amused tourists snapped selfies with the encased table, set with clean bowls, plates, chopsticks and condiment jars.

Lien wouldn’t say whether the dishes on display are the ones used by Bourdain and Obama, who she described as “modest and friendly”.

The transparent box is a form of preservation, and reverence, familiar to Hanoians: Vietnam’s much-praised revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh is embalmed and encased in glass at his mausoleum in central Hanoi.

Still, not all of Lien’s customers welcomed the stunt with open arms.

“Not sure how I feel about this,” Bourdain said on Instagram under a photo of the table at which he apparently once sat.