I can’t spell most of it, let alone pronounce it; but I like it. My favourites (sorry about the spelling) are:
cam tay cam
nihm nuong
bahn xieo
bun cha Hanoi
tam cam bi cha thit nuong
And lest we forget, cafe sua da to drink!
Don’t make me go and get my cookbook: post some explanations.
Me:
[ul][li]pho (fresh rice noodle soup)[/li][li]Vietnamese coleslaw (thin sliced carrots celery etc served with roast chicken and dressed with fish sauce, lime and rice vinegar)[/li][li]Crispy pigeon[/li][li]Squid with spicey salt.[/li][li]French fries finished by wok-sauteing in garlic[/li][li]Those strange bread rolls with pig’s liver pate and sliced chillies.[/li][li]bo tung xo (charcoal-grilled marinated beef fillet) [/ul][/li]
picmr
cam tay cam = rice in a clay pot. Brown gravy, chicken, quail eggs ‘n’ stuff.
nihm nuong = I call this a “Vietnamese burrito”. It’s char-broiled pork with veggies wrapped in a translucent rice noodle. About 7" long and 1.5" diameter. Comes with some sort of dipping sauce that’s orange in colour and looks like it has ribbons of egg or something in it.
bahn xieo = “Vietnamese omelette”. A crispy rice shell, folded over. Inside there’s bean sprouts, shrimp, and some other stuff. Comes with a huge plate of foliage and a small bowl. Break off a bit od the “omelette” and put it in the bowl with some mint, lettuce, and whatever other plants are on the plate. Put the fresh fish sauce on it. (Has to be fresh; not the bottled kind!)
bun cha Hanoi = char-broiled pork, a small char-broiled (1") beef patty, white noodles, foliage, fish sauce. Eat as above.
tam cam bi cha thit nuong = rice, char-broiled pork, egg cake, shredded pork, foliage and fish sauce. Again, eat it as described for the bahn xieo.
cafe sua da = Ooh, this is good! There’s a little coffee maker that looks like a stainless-steel espresso cup on a stainless-steel saucer. The bottom is perforated. Put some finely-ground French-roast coffee in the maker. Put some sweetened condensed milk in a cup. Put the maker over the cup. Put some boiling water on the grounds – just enough to dampen them. Let it sit for about 30 seconds. Screw the perforated cover over the grounds and unscrew it about half a turn. Fill the maker with boiling water and put on the cap. It will take 10-15 minutes for the coffee to drip ever so slowly through the perfs on the botton of the “saucer”. When it’s done, stir the coffee to mix in the sweetened condensed milk. Pour into a glass of ice and stir a little bit to start chilling it. Drink and enjoy! (BTW: I have two of the makers).
I always have to chuckle a little when I see the language written with the english alphabet & without the tonal symbols (dâú). I know that our keyboard limits us, it just makes an occasional funny sentence from time to time. You native speakers know what I’m talking about.
Viet Nam has some of the best food in the world, you just have to be a little careful when you order. It’s one of my favorites- very flavourful without being too spicy (but the spice is there if you want it).
The only things I refuse to eat are those that, when enlarged a hundred times, qualify as sea monsters. Octopus, squid, jellyfish & lobsters fall into this category. This is not meant to cast aspersions on Vietnamese food, since all of these life forms are somewhat popular in the menus of many cultures.
Snails, too.
And eels… bleah.
And if you want to get one of these handy little guys, don’t bother looking in any of the common kitchen/home furnishings stores like Lechters or Crate & Barrel. Just go to the little Saigon in your area and find the Phõ kitchens & restaraunts. More than likely there will be a Vietnamese grocery store nearby that sells them (if not, just ask the waiter, he’ll tell you when they are sold). They’ll also have the ground version of the coffee that’s used in the resteraunts (a little nuttier flavour than most regular coffe).
opus: Are you near Little Saigon in Orange County? I like My Nguyen and Vien Dong. There are other places we go to occasionally. Thanks for pointing out the unavailability of the coffee maker in typical supermarkets. I meant to post that they must be bought at a Vietnamese store, but I forgot.
BTW: The coffee makers are really cheap! I think I paid $2.95 each for mine.
The first time I had Vietnamese was back in college. My friend Pete, a 1st Gen. Vietnamese-American, took some friends and I to the resteraunt, and he ordered for all of us. The thing was, he wouldn’t tell us what was in anything! He had the waiter in on it, too. They would talk for a while and then look over at us eating and start laughing. It was really funny. I found out later we were eating basically lemongrass dishes and the like.
But my all time favorite Vietnamese dish is served at Chez Tuoy’s in Boulder, CO (not sure of the spelling but it’s pronounced Chez “Twee”'s). They serve this dish called Bo Ba Lot. Man, is it good. It’s shrimp and beef seasoned and wrapped in grape leaves, then it’s grilled and served with a chili-vinegarette dipping-sauce. Homer: Mmmmmm- Bo ba Lot.
I did opus one better and actually typed up the correct spelling of the OP. (Including changing “favourite” to “favorite”. (You’re supposed to be from L.A. after all.) If I do the link right, you can see them here.
My own favorites in the U.S. are pho and bun thit nuong. In Viet Nam, I like bun bo Hue and ca kho, and for dessert che chuoi and nuoc mia. I stay away from hot vit lon and chao long. (Don’t even ask.)
Sorry opus, I’m too lazy to look up the control sequences to get these closer to true Vietnamese, but I’m impressed that you did.
Frozen durian drink: nectar of the gods.
I also love pho and Vietnamese coffee. Mmmmm.
Toronto seems to have a very good selection of Vietnamese restaurants–the one I used to go to a lot was called Pho Hung (sorry for the lack of diacritical marks–I can’t remember them). They used to sell a set 2-course lunch at $C5. Unfortunately, other than beef or chicken Pho and Mystery Vegetable Soup, I can’t remember for the life of me what I had there–salads with beef or chicken seemed to be high on the list there.
P.J. O’Rourke, in a travelogue about Vietnam, has some funny stories about local restaurants…actually shacks along the side of the road, really. He claimed that the best place he ate was one where customers had to share the dining area with pigs, which presumably eventually ended up on plates in the same place.
My favorite: C-3.
Well, that’s how I order it, I don’t know its name in Vietnamese. It’s stir-fried chicken with lemongrass.
I’m having fun with this. Here’s some more.
Yes,
are pretty much the best place to eat, as long as you are a little bit careful. For a few cents you can get one particular dish done perfectly.
If missbunny likes durians, she’s braver than me. Whifforama.
Anyone who’s been there tried dragonfruit? Yum.
picmr
Same for Little Saigon, but the dish will cost more like five bucks. I’m told that you decide what you want to eat and then go to the place that specializes in that particular dish. But I’m never sure what I want when I go, so I just go to places I’ve tried several things at or go with my Vietnamese co-workers to places they choose.
It’s funny. The first time we visited Viet Nam, we only had the Lonely Planet guide to go on. It wasn’t bad, but it was also the only travel guide to Viet Nam at the time. We went to a couple of restaurants it recommended and found them mediocre, but packed with western tourists. The same was true of thanh long (dragonfruit). The Lonely Planet authors seemed to like it, and that made it very popular among the tourists. Personally, I find it sort of like bland kiwi fruit. It’s not bad, but not on a par with mangos, jack fruit, chom chom, nhan, vu sua, long an, mang cau, mang cut, trung ca, and a whole whole host of other tropical fruits that are available there. Maybe I just got a bad batch?
When were you there picmr?
Hmm, I thought I had my location listed in my profile… guess not. I am in DC, so I go to an area in Virginia called Seven Corners to get my fix (about a 15 minute drive). There are several nice mom & pop restaurants there.
There are a few here in the city, but they are so Americanized it isn’t funny. The fish sauce is watered down and they use celery in the Canh Chua (sour soup) instead of bac ha (sorry there’s no western name as far as I know). What is worse, the prices are almost twice as high in DC. Mom & pop restaurants tend to have the most authentic food & the lowest prices, although the atmosphere may suffer a little by western standards.
Greg: That’s good. I have a little applet that allows me to write with the VN alphabet & lets me put in all the right symbols, but the person I’m corresponding with has to have the same program to be able to read my message. Useful for point-to-point email, not much else.
You did. I didn’t check the profile.
I only have one experience with vietnamese food and that was not the best. I have a less than adventurous palate, so I would up eating white rice the whole time while the 13 people I was with ate icky smelly stuff. I made my dad take me to the diner afterwards. Mmmm…french fries.
opus: Aren’t Vietnamese fonts easier than an applet? That’s what I use. It takes a special keyboard program to be able to type Vietnamese, but then anyone with the font installed can read it. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure “bac ha” is peppermint.
hypergirl: you just went with the wrong people. We should get a gang together and meet in Little Saigon in “Quan Cam”, Orange County, CA. You’ll never go back to french fries.
When was I there? Last Feb. Dragonfruit is a speciality of the central coastal region, and yes it is a bit like kiwifruit. The outside of the fruit is a brilliant clothlike purple, and the inside looks like coconut ice with tiny black seeds. I found it subtle and absolutely delicious. I’m not much of a one for tropical fruit generally - I think mangoes smell like decaying flesh. If I could find dragonfruit here in Oz I would happily pay $10 for a single fruit.
BTW do Vietnamese places in the US serve spring rolls with iceberg lettuce, coriander and mint with the intention that you wrap and dip each roll as you go? Australian places all do,but in Vietnam they were not served that way.
picmr