Random Photos

These are some other photos from my time here in Saigon, Vietnam

Small suprises

The Chinese influence on the food in Vietnam cannot be understated.  From the simple noodle to chop sticks the traces of the Chinese, who controlled Vietnam for a thousand years are everywhere.  This food is another example.   

 If you are familiar with dim sum restaurants you may be aware of a food that is a simple steamed round rice noodle.  In Chinese restaurants they are usually stuffed with shrimp and pork and a bit of scallion.  The Vietnamese take on these improves them.  Using a combination of pork and wood ear mushroom all chopped finally and then wrapped around the noodle.  They are then topped with a bit of cilantro, basil, and mung beans and finally with fried shallots.  It is then drenched in the ubiquitous Nuc cham.  This was a very light meal and I could have had two more.  Thinking of which off I going to look for some more.

Nothing beats mom's home cooking

My friend Tai’s mother is a great cook.  She is worked on the sleeper trains for 10 years that traversed the entire country going from Saigon to Hanoi.  In her small galley kitchen she must have cooked a lot of different stuff, plus she was exposed to the incredible regional differences that exist in this country.  What you see on the Vietnamese menus in the states is a hybrid version of both north and south.  We mainly still see southern Vietnamese stuff because they are the majority of immigrants to the states.  Tai’s mother has distilled these experiences and is capable of cooking many of the regions of food.  

 The first one I tried was the fish cooked in a sour soup with a lot of this tasty very woody vegetable that looked like a stalk from an aloe vera plant.  It has no flavor when eaten raw but when cooked it absorbs all of what it is cooked with.  It is a great way to add crunch.   The fish was then combined with the Vietnamese plate of herbs and a rice paper wrapper and then dunked in a hoisin-based sauce that also had boiled pork liver mixed in it.  This is a combination that takes a pungent ingredient and makes it work.  These wraps also keep with tradition and use seafood and pork together.

She is also really good at reimagining ramen noodles.  First you soak the ramen in some hot water for a bit and then you can take them out and combine them with shrimp, beef and bok choy topped with a bit of black pepper to create an elegant stir fried noodle dish.  This evening we all sat on the tiled floor around some of these tasty foods.  

A river restuarant with a view

The city of Saigon is expanding by the minute.  The constant new wave of construction makes this city more and more of a labyrinth.  Everyday it heaves to consume another suburb.  Unlike other travelers who have come here I was blessed with an instant base of contacts and friends on my arrival in Saigon.  This has turned out to be a necessity to the discovery of new and exciting places to eat.  Like most of the backpacking circuit there has become a rut.  The Lonely Planet books that exist however wise and informative cannot cover the entire city or push you to explore areas that they might not have guided you too.  To be able to see this city from an insider’s perspective has been a great joy.  

This restaurant along the banks of the Saigon River in the Binh Thanh district is one of those places.  A local’s only joint with charcoal grills and a plethora of seafood.  I was getting way to much protein in my diet so Tai and his girlfriend and I started off the meal with some grilled okra with a bit of chili and garlic.  Okra in the US tends to be fried and is still an acquired taste for many.  I expected the sliminess to overpower but instead they had been a bit more dried-out by the grilling process and were really nice.  Plus the Nuc Cham (fish sauce, really processed sugar, a bit of water, chili and garlic) was another way to mask the odd texture.   

We continued with eggplant.  Lightly grilled, skin removed and served with peanuts and scallions that had been lightly cook in oil.  This was a subtle combination more about texture than taste but again Nuc cham was the way to cut the greasiness.   

Squid followed with a slightly sweet flavor that had been quickly stir fried with scallions and onion.   

We also ordered panko-covered sardines that were quickly fried and served with a fermented tofu dipping sauce.  This dipping sauce is certainly not for the faint of heart.  It has a certain stench like many things in the Asian kitchen.  But now that fermented things are the new pork bun in foodie kitchens it may catch on.  The dipping sauce consists of fermented tofu some raw garlic and dried chili oil blended.  This turned out to be my favorite food of the meal because it was a lot of new flavor profiles for me.   This restaurant was in an idyllic setting for a great meal and off the beaten track. 

Market

Fresher than fresh herbs and greens

Last night I was invited to go to the morning market with Tai's mother.  I am not proud to say it but I think that in all of the times I have lived or traveled in Asia I have rarely woken up at 6:00am to go to these markets.  It is a sin that I have remedied this morning when I visited the Cay Thi market near the house of Tai's family.  As Tai's mother and I walked up quiet side streets and saw families starting their days I realized that these were scenes that I have sadly missed out on.  As we turned the corner you could see the top of the street which plainly looked like chaos.

River Crabs

Dried shrimp

This picture does not do justice to the chaos

Chinese Sausage

Fried Pork

Fresh Tofu

These pictures will not do justice to the cacophony of sounds, smells that encountered.  This is serious business.  These market scenes play out every morning in Southeast Asia and are almost entirely left to the woman.  These pics give you just a bit of a taste of what this place was like.  I think that many of the woman really get a kick out of a foreigner man who is so interested in food.  As our society embraces the man in the kitchen that work here is still divided.  In addition when a male is photographing vegetables and tofu they really think your strange and laugh a lot at you.  Thankfully I have had a lot of practice.  The market should be the first thing you go to when you touch down.   These markets offer an unadulterated look at Vietnamese society and how much better they eat then the rest of us.  I'll leave you with some of these photos.  In the next day or two I am going to try and find some of the places that I ate at when I first came to this wonderful city in 2006, a city I only scratched the surface of.

Pho and a double decker restaurant

Homemade Pho

 After a morning bowl of Pho made by my Tai's mother (I will write another posting about this wonderful cook so stay tuned) which was a lighter broth with more hints of the aromatic Vietnamese cinnamon than I have had before. 

Pork 

 We rolled around this city playing a cat and mouse game with the ever present rain storms that are common this time of year.  Lunch consisted of two soups and small anchovy-like fish cooked in clay pot with fish sauce, sugar and a bit of soy.  The jet lag had caught up to me by this time and I just went and passed out. 

After an extended nap I woke up and went with Tai to the neighborhood double decker restaurant.  A restaurant as you can see from this photos that makes some pretty food.  I had to order some Gio Cio  and let Tai order the rest. 

He, of course, orders more fun and exotic stuff to bring to the table.  So we got some frogs legs deep fried and some pork ribs.  This food is really salty to encourage you to drink.  While we were eating I look to our left and see that a table had ordered some fish dish.  Of course I had to go over and see what it was and this photo as you can see is a great example of the immense beauty the Vietnamese bring to their food.  These ain't photoshopped colors.   They were popping before I even took a picture.

Same same but different

    As the plane descended into Saigon the view out of my window was of round fishing boats bobbing in the South China sea their lights together creating a constellation of white light.  I had seen these same scenes when I first came to this country in 2006.  They were a comforting reminder. All travelers must have similar feelings on returning to this part of the world.  Maybe they remember the smell of incense in the morning mixed with smoke from fires, or the smell of raw sewage mixed with something else.  Vietnam is a total assault on the senses when you leave the comfort of dry air and air conditioning. 

    I walked out of the airport in to thick air filled with smoke and humidity.  Like clockwork Tai, my guide/former student quickly whisked away from the airport in a car.   Cars seem to becoming much more common here than before.  I only have 2006 as comparison.  This country is moving foreword so fast that it is hard to really keep track of the pace of development.  After disposing of my stuff it was off to a restaurant of Tai's choosing.  Everyone eats better then Americans.  As much as we are slowly improving what we eat, in Vietnam they are just on another level.  They are truly using what is around them to make some incredible food.    An hour after getting off the plane and being served ice cold Tiger beer and snails?  Yes please.  Two types, the first being black and the size of a fingernail, to even get the meat out you needed to use a safety pin.  As I was being propositioned by a gay makeup artist/owner I was served fresh water snails which were bigger and totally mind blowing.  Yes a snail can be mind blowing.  Most people who have eaten snails know that they have a earthy aftertaste which for some is to much.  I was expecting the same when I bit into these.  The exact opposite.  These were fresh and totally without any aftertaste.  With salty chili and lime dipping sauce they were the real hit of the meal.  We rounded out the meal with some grilled shrimp and chicken wings drenched in garlic and fish sauce, the kind that are becoming well known through Pok Pok wings in NYC.  These wings should make Buffalo wild wings consider their whole sales strategy.  This city on just the first night is exploding with fresh ingredients and passionate eaters.  It is good to be back in Vietnam.