Fish for your food

A popular weekend activity for families is to head out of the cacophony and make your way to a tranquil area.  This restaurant is about 20 minutes outside of downtown Saigon in the district of Bin Thanh.  It is a place where you can fish for your lunch.  The restaurant is built around many fishponds that are loaded with fish.  With bamboo rods and crickets you attempt to catch something that is palatable.  I did not have any success but thankfully there were many other fish to choose from.   

This dish is a common sight in Vietnam. They literally fry the fish with all its skin and scales still on with garlic.  It is then served with the common vegetable garden plate filled with perilla, fish mint, lettuce, pickled daikon and carrot, green banana, unripe star fruit and sweet pineapple.  You then take your rice paper and lightly coat it with water to make it malleable and construct.  I am sucker for the combination of perilla, pineapple, lettuce and mint.   

The genius of Vietnamese food is that you don’t have to settle for just one flavor you instead are able to create a different texture and flavor with each wrap you make.  Your palate never gets tired so you can eat a lot.  Take this and wrap and dip in a choice of two dipping sauces.  The first one is the Nouc Cham (fish sauce, sugar, chili, and garlic) or Mắm Nêm (shrimp paste, pineapple, garlic and sugar).  Mắm Nêm is an acquired taste and is a much more pungent dipping sauce than that of Nouc Cham.  After eating this people can smell you from a mile away but the flavor is really deep and complex.  These places are great places to get away from the diesel fumes and traffic.