"It's a bit chaotic," said Jimmy Pham, manager of the KOTO restaurant, in a narrow Hanoi street, as he apologised for the slow service in the downstairs dining room. "Table 12 upstairs is keeping us busy."
The customers weren't complaining however. In fact they were beaming. For at table 12 on the upper floor, tucking into grilled vegetables with hummus and pitta bread, was the President of the United States.
"Hi! How are you? How are you doing?" Mr Clinton called out to diners in the privately-run restaurant which doubles as a vocational centre for street children who sell postcards and sex outside tourist hotels.
Mr Clinton's informality was not quite what Hanoi had expected from the first US president to come to the country since the end of the Vietnam War. However, it worked miracles for US-Vietnam relations. Everywhere his limousine stopped the first reaction was astonishment, followed by a rush of waving, cheering people, and a thicket of outstretched hands.
Mr Clinton even got in some souvenir shopping, browsing like any tourist among the figurines and leather bags in an upstairs arts and crafts store.
In the Old Quarter the buildings are fantastically narrow, a legacy of the days when taxes were decided on frontage widths, and when Mr Clinton strolled on to the balcony, he was able to shake hands with people leaning out from next door.
At times the enthusiasm almost got out of hand. Cheering students ran on to the roadway as his motorcade approached Vietnam National University in mid-afternoon, and police pushed and slapped them to clear the way.
Vietnamese security officials also jostled reporters and photographers following Mr Clinton to the Temple of Literature. "Don't push, everybody," the President said as photographers elbowed each other in the courtyards of the 930-year-old temple.
During the formal parts of the programme on his first full day in the Vietnamese capital, Mr Clinton encountered giant busts of Ho Chi Minh, but he did not visit the mausoleum where the legendary figure who masterminded the war is usually displayed in a glass sarcophagus.
Uncle Ho, as he is fondly known, is in Moscow, where his embalmed corpse is sent every autumn for maintenance.