It was a pleasant meal, but this upscale emporium couldn’t touch what was delivered at far less expensive joints, many of them transitional spots that are essentially overgrown street stalls. While taking over slightly more permanent real estate, moving from sidewalk to storefront, the informality and limited menu of the street vendor are preserved. The more we sought out these specialized places, the better we ate.

Take bun cha, a classic Hanoi meal of charcoal-grilled pork slices and pork patties, served over thin noodles. We had pleasant restaurant versions, but they paled next to the bun cha served at Bun Cha Nem Cua Be Dac Kim, a one-dish joint in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, where phenomenally flavorful grilled meat arrived hot and juicy, and the dipping options included a mountain of pepper-spiked garlic, along with fish-sauce-based condiments.

The little two-story storefront, which opens onto the street where some of the grilling takes place, is furnished with those same oilcloth-covered tables and plastic stools that seem to define street food everywhere. A dedicated staff produces that one spectacular recipe (well, actually two recipes, since the bun cha comes with excellent crab spring rolls).

A similar setup exists at Bun Thang Ba Duc on Cau Go Street, also in the Old Quarter. Bun thang is one of the great noodle soups of Vietnam, but less well known than pho — the anise-scented beef noodle soup that has been franchised all over the world.

This is another one-dish place, and once again, much of the cooking (and eating) is on the sidewalk, although there has been expansion into a modest two-story restaurant. When we were there, the spaghetti-like noodles, bathed in a rich chicken broth, came with an array of toppings — egg, chicken, onions, herbs, dried shrimps, fried shallots, pickled vegetables — arranged in a gorgeous mosaic atop the white noodles.

And then there are the essential flavorings: shrimp paste, and what Mr. Templer describes as “the tiniest drop of musk produced by a male belostomatid insect, a large and rather fearsome beetle.”