Vietnamese Food - Good vs. bad

[lirelou]

My favorite dish is goi cuon, which are veggie, noodle, meat and shrimp rolled into a wet bang trang rice paper. Best sauce is Man Ruon Tom, which is what Altus describes, but my wife mixes it with a bit of pre-mixed nuoc mam and crushed pineapple, which I can never get in Vietnamese restaurants. In the states, they usually serve it with a sauce made from nuoc mam and hoisin sauce (thuong cho Pho) with crushed peanuts on top. OK, but no substitute for Mam Ruoc Tom. Here in Saigon, I have noted many tourists being served goi cuon without any sauce, or with nothing more than nuon mam, which simply shows how far down Saigon cuisine has falled as of late. You can still get decent broken rice dishes, though.

Common Saigon beers these days are 333, LaRue, Saigon Red and Saigon Green (sold in the States as '33'), San Miguel (on draft in the neighborhood) and Fosters (draft, sold mostly in the backpacker areas) as well as Heineken, which is reasonably priced at $20,000 dong ($1).

The Mam Tom we eat at home is Mam Tom Hue, pickled shrimp from the Hue region, definitely one of Vietnam's finer foods. Also like shredded green papaya salad. Chau Doc has to be, hands down, one of the worst places in Vietnam for food. Yet I found a decent green papaya salad being sold on the streets. They've probably run the vendor out of town by now.

[Salinator]

Never been to Vietnam, but do love Vietnamese food. Before the current recession, the wife and I and used to go out to eat it at least once a week but usually 2-3 times weekly. On the bright side, Vietnamese food for the most part is inexpensive and is our usually our choice when we do get that occasional chance to eat out now, albeit with a much more conservation spread.

There are a huge selection of Vietnamese restaurants here along with the Vietnamese/Chinese fusion, Vietnamese/French fusion, and the Foo-Foo Vietnamese restaurants.

There are noodle houses galore. There is one that serves a noodle soup so huge that is free, you keep the bowl as a trophy, you get a t-shirt that proclaims you a slayer of the Pho, get your picture on the wall of fame..............IF you can finish it. I want to attempt it, but fear the aftermath. It is described as equivalent to six orders of Pho Dac Biet Bo Vien large bowl. Not sure if you have to also finish six portions of sprouts and basil condiments! I'm not concerned about the peppers as I can eat them like grapes.

[MontanaKid]

I didn't eat a bite of Vietnamese food in Vietnam. I was never close to any developed population centers with restaurants, etc. In the field it was C-Rats and LRRP rations (freeze-dried) The often sent out hot chow with our resupply. Seemed to be a lot of roast beef, which G.I's, in their irreverent tradition, called "water buffalo."

I did develop a taste for Vietnamese recipes. I have a couple of recipe books. I liked the stuffed squid I made. We have two Vietnamese Restaurants in Missoula (Montana). They both feature several varieties of pho as their main offering.

[KEN JENSEN]

I didn't eat any Vietnamese food in Vietnam either. Never ate any here in the States either. They seem to be always located in areas were there are no dogs....

P.S. I do eat my share of Japanese and Chinese food though. Even make my own Sushi; made a batch today.

[Salinator]

Originally Posted by KEN JENSEN

I didn't eat any Vietnamese food in Vietnam either. Never ate any here in the States either. They seem to be always located in areas were there are no dogs....

Dog is better as Korean or Filipino cuisine.

[PhilipLaos]

Originally Posted by Salinator

Dog is better as Korean or Filipino cuisine.

You had to bring that up, didn't you?



I should never have named him 'Cookie'.

R.I.P., number one dog.


Philip

[boomer400]

Salinator, where is this place that has the Pho food challenge? Sounds ....filling if not fun! Wonder if it's any good to begin with; bad pho is bad even if you get more than a couple of bowls worth.

[boomer400]

BTW, since the op included bad foods, I'll throw in something I don't particularily like : balut. Anyone have that? I've had it a few times and each time I think, maybe it'll be better this time. But no, it's still bad to me everytime. If you don't know what it is, ask a Filipino, SEA buddy, they can tell you. I always have it with a beer to chase it, but it's not so much the flavor that's bad....for instance, I've had Mam Tom Hue straight undiluted accidentally and that's kinda nasty (although I like it just fine when it's properly mixed and concantenated). So the balut flavor isn't the issue for me.

Also, while I've never had typical domesticated pets for consumption, I have had snake juice (anyone remember snake alley in Taipei?) yum, yum! Anyhow, when my wife goes back occasionally, she goes into the boonies and finds all sorts of stuff. No monkey and she's smart enough not to go that far but she has had rice paddy rat (can't remember the correct name for it, I think it was called something like rice rabbit or something like that); said it was great....

[KEN JENSEN]

Originally Posted by philiplaos

You had to bring that up, didn't you?



I should never have named him 'Cookie'.

R.I.P., number one dog.


Philip

ROFLOL! "Gooooood dogie".


Couldn't give you another Rep so soon Phil, so this is it.

[Salinator]

Originally Posted by boomer400

Salinator, where is this place that has the Pho food challenge? Sounds ....filling if not fun! Wonder if it's any good to begin with; bad pho is bad even if you get more than a couple of bowls worth.

Their Pho is actually quite good. I've had the regular non-challenge bowls.

http://phogardensf.com/page.php?Page=team

Are your sure? I thought I ordered the BIG BOWL!!!!

[boomer400]

Holy crap, uhh, that's a serious bowl of pho; think I'll just settle for the regular size. Then I'll be able to walk out of there without p**ing everytime I take a step! BTW, have you gone to Crustacean up there? How you like it? I've been to the one in Beverly Hills but found out strangely pedestrian. I think the problem is I go to SaigonTown too often and there's just too many good places there to get the same stuff for way less.

[Miss Saigon]

Originally Posted by KEN JENSEN

I didn't eat any Vietnamese food in Vietnam either. Never ate any here in the States either. They seem to be always located in areas were there are no dogs....

P.S. I do eat my share of Japanese and Chinese food though. Even make my own Sushi; made a batch today.

A few things Ken. Dog is more of a Northern Vietnamese thing, rather than central or southern. Along with all of those coagulated blood dishes they eat, including that of dog. Now, desperate people in war time will eat almost anything as attested to by many Europeans during WWII. So during the Vietnam war you might have found people anywhere in the country eating all sorts of things if they were poor and desperate. But as a normal cultural thing, the dog stuff is of the North.

You, my friend, were in South Vietnam lest you forget. And most of those who fled to the US and then opened restaurants were also from South Vietnam. The likelihood of you ever being served dog by a Vietnamese, surreptitiously or otherwise, is very very slim.

Now if you ever want to visit Ha Noi and go to a restaurant, you might want to stay away from "tiết canh chó" on the menu.

As for Japanese and Chinese food, they are not the same as Vietnamese food. Although I find that most Vietnamese restaurants in the US serve a large number of Chinese dishes in an effort to be more recognizable to the American customer. It is not uncommon to find far more Chinese dishes on the menu in a Vietnamese restaurant than Vietnamese in the US. After all. They need to make money so they must tailor their offerings to what American customers expect.

[Salinator]

Originally Posted by boomer400

Holy crap, uhh, that's a serious bowl of pho; think I'll just settle for the regular size. Then I'll be able to walk out of there without p**ing everytime I take a step! BTW, have you gone to Crustacean up there? How you like it? I've been to the one in Beverly Hills but found out strangely pedestrian. I think the problem is I go to SaigonTown too often and there's just too many good places there to get the same stuff for way less.

Crustacean is way overrated and is geared towards the general gullible American public. Up here, everyone and his uncle is doing the crab and garlic noodle thing. Crustacean is among the worst because it just cooks precooked crabs!

If you really want to do the crab, try Thanh Long. These are the people who inspired Crustacean. They still cook the crab in a secret part of the kitchen where none of the staff can see. Family secret going third generation. Their stuffed squid is a bomb too.

[jeffdoorgunnr]

Originally Posted by boomer400

BTW, since the op included bad foods, I'll throw in something I don't particularily like : balut. Anyone have that? I've had it a few times and each time I think, maybe it'll be better this time. But no, it's still bad to me everytime. If you don't know what it is, ask a Filipino, SEA buddy, they can tell you. I always have it with a beer to chase it, but it's not so much the flavor that's bad....for instance, I've had Mam Tom Hue straight undiluted accidentally and that's kinda nasty (although I like it just fine when it's properly mixed and concantenated). So the balut flavor isn't the issue for me.

Also, while I've never had typical domesticated pets for consumption, I have had snake juice (anyone remember snake alley in Taipei?) yum, yum! Anyhow, when my wife goes back occasionally, she goes into the boonies and finds all sorts of stuff. No monkey and she's smart enough not to go that far but she has had rice paddy rat (can't remember the correct name for it, I think it was called something like rice rabbit or something like that); said it was great....

My wife says Balut is a duck egg...................

[KEN JENSEN]

Originally Posted by Miss Saigon

A few things Ken. Dog is more of a Northern Vietnamese thing, rather than central or southern. Along with all of those coagulated blood dishes they eat, including that of dog. Now, desperate people in war time will eat almost anything as attested to by many Europeans during WWII. So during the Vietnam war you might have found people anywhere in the country eating all sorts of things if they were poor and desperate. But as a normal cultural thing, the dog stuff is of the North.

You, my friend, were in South Vietnam lest you forget. And most of those who fled to the US and then opened restaurants were also from South Vietnam. The likelihood of you ever being served dog by a Vietnamese, surreptitiously or otherwise, is very very slim.

Well the "dog" thingie was a joke; and mainly a "rumor" that ran rapid among the troops

The only thing I seen S. Vietnamese folks eat was rice, peanuts, and it seemed most the adults chewed Betel Nuts. Oh yeah, and watermelon. Of course I did run across a lot of "traps" set to catch creatures that ran around in the jungle. Most villages also had pigs and chickens; so they more than likely ate those also.

The folks would also eat almost any food we gave them.