Đặc sản Trảng Bàng is my
favorite Vietnamese dish. Vietnamese
food is so much more than just Pho and spring rolls. It has a vast array of do it your self-dishes that allow you
to keep your taste buds guessing about what will come next. In my time here again in Saigon I have
gone to two of these types of restaurants that specialize in this dish. This dish is from the Trảng Bàng province of Vietnam and is a very simple
idea. Take boiled pork or beef
tendon, rice paper that has been softened by the condensation on your glass and
then fill with a garden of different vegetables and herbs. This is such fresh and healthy food
that you can eat a lot and not ever feel like you are bloated or too full. What you see in the first pictures is
the vegetable plate. It consists
of a type of spring onion, lettuce, basil, saw tooth coriander, perilla and two
of my new favorite additions. This
restaurant supposedly sourced veggies and herbs from the wild. I can’t speak to the provenance of them
but I will say there were surprises.
If you look closely in the picture you will see a reddish-brown and
green leaf. This is the leaf of
the star fruit tree and tastes like an unripe star fruit. This was the first really great
revelation. The second came with
this leaf.
This leaf is in the same family of basil but
has a very deep anise flavor to it.
Both of these added to the wraps with such a new dimension of flavor. Of course the dish is also served with
cucumber, pickled daikon, and a bit of chili and then you dip it into Nước mắm and you’re off to
the races. This place is called Hoàng Ty I. It is a bit of a ways outside of the city center but is
worth checking out because it is right along the Saigon river and you can watch
the sunset go down while munching on amazing rolls.
After finding this first place I was now on the
scent to find another place that was a bit closer to the city center. One of best websites about Vietnamese
food in Saigon is Noodlepie.com.
This man must have an uncanny knowledge of Vietnamese or some great
contacts. He has scoured the city
and found many a great place. http://www.noodlepie.com/blog/banh_trang/index.html
I looked at his website for a place in the city that served this same dish and
it took me here.
It was another excellent
meal and was served with even more stuff.
Not only was the plate of herbs and vegetables overflowing, the other
plates contained green banana, unripe star fruit, pineapple and picked radishes
besides the pickled daikon and carrot.
The winner for me was the addition of fresh peppercorns which when you
bite into them give you a little spicy jolt.
I also ordered some oysters to see what a Vietnamese oysters
tasted like. These were the
meatiest oysters I have had. They
were big, dense and required a lot of chewing, different than the ones that I
normally just shoot back with a squeeze of lemon. There were limes available but I choose to use a bit of fish
sauce instead. Oysters taste really good with a bit of Nước mắm on them.
This place is awesome and almost better
than the place by the river. The
only drawback is it is on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city and is really noisy. I say put up with
the noise and let the crunch of the vegetables drown out the sounds of the
motorbikes.
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