Food, Glorious Food

I promised to write about the food. At this point I have had so many amazing meals that it’s hard to know where to start. And the food presentation…mwah!

If you eat ethnic food in Canada then you know that Vietnamese food is already pretty famous. We know Vietnamese coffee, pho (noodle soup), bun (vermicelli noodle dish), salad rolls (veg, herbs, vermicelli & meat/seafood/tofu in rice paper wrappers) and bahn mi (sandwich in a crispy baguette), but here everything tastes fresher and more complex. In India I have eaten food that is expertly spiced, but Vietnamese food is lightly spiced, and expertly freshly herbed. Everything is light and fresh tasting and crunchy. And servings are generous. How do these people stay so slim? 

Seriously, how do the Vietnamese stay so slim when their meals are so huge and carb heavy? It’s rice, rice noodles, egg noodles or baguette with every meal and loads of sugar in all their beverages. Our guide from Hue to Hai An bought us big baguettes smeared with peanut butter and sugar, and it was delicious. The French left a vestige of glorious pastry baking here and the croissants are divine. 

Cambodian traditional dishes are similar but more coconut and pepper based sauces for the food and less sugar in their drinks.

It’s a sin there aren’t Cambodian restaurants around at home. At least I haven’t been to one before. Their food flavouring relies heavily on different varieties of peppercorns, coconut and Thai style curry. Their main national dishes are Fish Amok, Beef Lok Lak and any kind of meat Khmer Curry. They are fine to substitute tofu instead and do so beautifully. Both Cambodia and Vietnam are big tofu countries, which makes it easy for me and they get the joke of my dog’s name. Cambodia is also big into alcoholic jams. I never see those at the farmers markets at home and that’s a crying shame. 

The part of Cambodian foodie life I didn’t sample are the critters. Remember the spiders? Those aren’t just for tourist shock value, people do sell  and buy them and insects and grubs on street corners in towns. Roasted baby birds and frogs as well. We watched a video about the landmine detecting rats where a sad rat handler admitted that he used to love traditional Cambodian rat dishes, but now he can’t bring himself to eat them. 

I have already written about the coffee and tea in Vietnam. I will just add that they are the absolute best things. Cambodian coffee and teas are close, but there isn’t the variety and the coffee isn’t quite as strong. Vietnamese coffee starts with some condensed milk in a small cup or glass and then some strong dark roasted medium ground coffee in a metal filter called a phin. Once it filters, you can stir and drink it hot or add it to a tall glass of ice. Places that shred and whip their own coconut for coconut coffee are the best!  

Interestingly, coffee and tea shops usually don’t sell any food, or maybe just some cake or pastry. This ain't no Starbucks quinoa salad shit here. People are here for the serious business of caffeine based socializing. 

South Vietnam has pretty extensive and esoteric tea options. The 7 Elevens in Ho Chi Minh City have tea drinks coolers that have a bit of tea concentrate, say chrysanthemum and lotus with jelly, in a cup with a sealed lid and, when you buy it, the counter person reconstitutes it. In a restaurant in Hue I had a salted kumquat and pineapple tea and it rocked my fucking world. We just sat down to iced oolong tea with lotus root and pandan with salted cream cheese, and K’s response after a sip was “Oh my god, who makes tea like that!” It is a 100% warranted response. I think I let out an orgasmic sigh after each sip. 

We tried some tea in the Hoi An Folk Culture Museum that is the traditional family tea of the woman who served it to us. Her family lives in the mountains and this is their secret family tea. It has 15 plants picked from their home mountain and dried and there is no label, just the family’s name taped on it. We bought some sadly knowing we can never replace it once it’s gone. Life’s just like that sometimes.

The breakfast question is always western or local? Usually we go western, unless we have slept in. Local breakfast is a pho noodle soup or bun noodle and meat dish. Feels a bit heavy for me for brekkie. 

Snack food is complicated since chip flavours are Spicy Lobster, Hot Chili Squid and Steak Tenderloin. I might find an original Lays if I’m lucky. Not veggie friendly. Whole chicken feet and pork skins are big sellers at the snack section. Cambodia and Vietnam both grow cocoa and have local chocolate companies.

Bahn Mi is good any time of day or night. I marched K around the old quarter of Hanoi before our train to Hue to get to “the best bahn mi in Hanoi” from Bahn Mi 25. It’s famous and the line up for it shows just how famous. I ordered the tofu with king oyster mushroom stir fry and avocado and didn’t even open the box before we got on the train. Once the train pulled out I tried my best to slowly savour it but it just wasn’t possible. It was the most amazing sandwich I have ever put in my mouth. The bread was crisp on the outside, soft on the inside and the filling was perfection. I imagine if you’re out on the town having some drinks then it is the perfect thing.

Hotpots are popular here. We went to a tiny back alley super charming hotpot restaurant in Ho Chi Minh and ordered the mushroom hotpot. There is a wild variety of mushrooms available here and they are soooo good. Our host brought us an induction element and sat our selected herbal broth pot on it. He put out some vegan fish sauce and chili sauce for us, then he came out with an arrangement of mushrooms that looked like the flower arrangement for a wedding table. It was so artistic that it felt like a sin to disarrange it. But we were hungry and we tore it apart. We shredded the chicken leg mushrooms, popped in the morels, and all the unrecognized mushrooms, threw in the tofu and veggies and let it cook up. Yum! It was a massive amount of food and we did our best.

We had some incredibly delicious meals. There were a lot of “oh that’s gooooood…” and a couple places where the food was transcendent. In Ho Chi Minh City there was the aforementioned hotpot place and a vegetarian restaurant we went to twice (and will again) that had amazing flavour, including salad rolls with a basil and cinnamon dipping sauce. Words cannot do this sauce justice. Vietnamese cinnamon has a much more complex flavour than we were used to. Their soups and clay pots were equally delicious. Sala in Hue had crispy eggplant that had us burning our tongues to shovel it in. In Hanoi we went to the buffet place, Sadhu, that made an asparagus soup that brought about gasps. Each thing brought to our table was an unfamiliar delight in its combination of tastes and textures.

We are eating all the unfamiliar - a mushroom we’ve never heard of wrapped in a lalot leaf? Sure. Tapioca dumplings? Done that and don’t need to again. Mystery tea? Why not? Pumpkin smoothie? Another please. Really, please. 

I have a list of things to make sure I eat before we head home. Veggie pho, another bahn mi, coconut coffee from Cong, more weasel coffee (wait, did I mention weasel shat coffee is a specialty here? The weasel colon makes coffee so much better; even K liked it and she doesn’t drink coffee.) and those salad rolls with that crazy cinnamon basil sauce in Saigon. Oh, and a 7 Eleven tea frenzy.