Sweet and Sour in Boston

Ever been to a restaurant and you look at the menu and are completely terrified/confused at to what to order? Since you don't know what's good and are too afraid to just point to a table next to you and order what they are having, you end up ordering something that is familiar even though it might not be something the restaurant (or cuisine) is known for. I believe this happens a lot at Vietnamese restaurants, because I see items like Pad Thai and Chicken Fingers and Pork Fried Rice on menus. While it's not bad to order something just to be safe, don't you want to order something that the cooks in the back are more likely to make for themselves? Or maybe you are just curious about Vietnamese food and want to know what some good dishes are to order. Here's a little guide to help you along.

Pho



Probably the most popular item at any Vietnamese place. It's the greatest noodle soup ever, at least in my mind. Perfect for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It's simply just rice noodles in a chicken or beef broth with some onions and meat of your choice. Served with bean sprouts, mint leaves, lime, chili sauce and hoison sauce, it's the most personable meal in the world. No one eats their pho the same way as anyone else. You add whatever you want and slurp it down. (Don't be afraid to slurp, it's not considered rude. In fact, the more slurping the better.) For the meat, Pho Ga is simply Chicken Noodle Soup. Pho Bo is the beef version, but you can get different types of beef cuts. For example, Pho Tai is rare flank steak that is cut very thin. You can tell the quality of a Vietnamese restaurant by how rare the meat is when it comes out to your table. The broth is so hot that it cooks the meat when you mix it all up right before you eat it. The rarer it is, the better it is. If you don't like to see rare meat in your noodles, you can order Pho Chin which is well done beef. Bo Vien is beef meatball and you can have it alone in the pho or add it to any other Pho Bo choice. I normally do and I judge most restaurants by how many meatballs I get. For a $1 or $2 more per bowl, I like it if I have more than 4 pieces of Bo Vien. If you are feeling adventurous or just love various types of beef, get Pho Dac Biet, which basically is the kitchen sink in Pho Bo. You get tripe, tendon, flank, brisket, tripe and bo vien all in your bowl. This can also be called Xe Lua, which literally translates into "Large Train" in Vietnamese. This is the XL, or extra-large bowl size. If this little write up on Pho still confuses you, a better write up can be found here.

Appetizers

Of course, everyone has heard of Cha Gio (Egg Rolls). The Vietnamese version are normally smaller and thinner than the Chinese versions, but made in the same way. A filling of pork, mushrooms, rice noodles, carrots and other vegetables are placed inside a wrapper and rolled up and deep fried until crispy gold, brown and delicious. These are normally served with lettuce, pickled carrots and Nuoc Mam, fish sauce. I like to wrap the lettuce around the egg roll, add some of the pickled carrots and dip into the nuoc mam. If you are afraid of the nuoc mam (and I know it doesn't smell like the greatest thing in the world; be sure not to spill some on your clothes.) Just eat the egg roll plain or try the Goi Cuon (Spring Rolls) which are served with a peanut flavored dipping sauce. The spring rolls are shrimp and/or pork rolled into rice noodle wrappers with some lettuce, rice noodles and some mint.



Banh Xeo is a fried crepe dish that can be a meal for one person or an appetizer for multiple people. Shrimp, pork, bean sprouts are pan fried in a crepe batter and flipped over like an omelet. Similar to the egg rolls, lettuce and pickled carrots and nuoc mam are served with it and the banh xeo can be wrapped up and eaten with your hands.

Bun and Com (Rice)

I put bun and com into the same categories because they are served basically the same way, except one is in a bowl and the other is on a plate. Bun is rice noodles and com is rice. You can order Bun Thit Nuong, which has grilled meat (either chicken, pork or beef) served over the rice noodles that lies in a bed of veggies (carrots and lettuce mainly). A side bowl of nuoc mam comes with it that you can add however little or much you would like. Mix it all up and eat. I normally like to add a Cha Gio to my order, which means that the restaurant will add an egg roll that is cut up into 3 or 4 bite sized pieces and added to the bun. Com Thit Nuong is basically the same thing, except the meat is not cut up into smaller peices. So normally you'd get a grilled pork chop served over a bed of white rice.

Banh Hoi

Let's say you like both the Bun Thit Nuong and the Goi Cuon, but can't decide which one you want. Well, you can order the Banh Hoi. Basically, it's the Vietnamese version of fajitas. You get rice noodle wrappers, a bowl of hot water, a plate of cooked chicken or pork or shrimp, and some rice noodles and veggies. You dip the rice noodle wrapper into the hot water, lay it on your plate, add some meat and veggies and rice noodles and roll it all up. Dip it into some nuoc mam and you are all set. Very simple and a fun meal to order for a group of people to try it out. Remember, Vietnamese food is not fine cuisine dining. It's slurp, get messy, talk to your friends and enjoy your meal dining.

Family Style Options

Whenever I used to eat out with my family, my dad would order 4 or 5 different dishes and some white rice. This is a great way to try out different Vietnamese items and it again is a much more fun option than everyone having their own dish. Here are some of the dishes I love to order: Bo Luc Lac, cubes of beef sauteed in fish sauce, Canh Chua, a Vietnamese sour soup made with seafood and pineapple, Tom Rang Mua, fried shrimp (with head on of course) in a salty spicy covering, and Ca Kho To, fish cooked in a clay pot.

So there you have it. A quick little guide to ordering Vietnamese food. And don't stop at just the dishes I've listed, try whatever sounds good too, or ask your waiter what they think is good. Or, if you are still afraid to order something different, just got the Banh Mi. You can never go wrong with a good sandwich. (You do know what banh mi is, right?)

One of my favorite dishes that my mom would make is Bo Luc Lac (Vietnamese Shaking Beef). We would eat this with rice and also with french fries. So good. I've made it a few times before and while it's turned out great, I've never been able to recreate my mom's dish. Food and Wine had a recipe from the Slanted Door and we tried it out one night. We used the side roast from the whole tenderloin I broke down a couple of weeks ago. Probably should have used one of the filets too, but I didn't realize how little beef I had until the end.






The next day I tried again to recreate one of my mom's best dishes, Ca Ri Ga (chicken curry). I've made this many times before and each time it turns out good, but not as good as my mom's. I just don't know what she does to make it so perfectly, but I really need to pick her brain on this.

People are always amazed that I was born and raised in Oklahoma, that it's highly unlikely that a person of Vietnamese descent could be raised where the Midwest meets the Southwest. But, there are actually tons of people of Vietnamese descent in Oklahoma City, enough to have a Little Saigon area, full of Vietnamese shops, restaurants and grocery stores.

Last year, there was a great article in the NYTIMES about this very such fact, and the great food that is found there:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/travel/04frugalweb-1.html

I always took Vietnamese food for granted growing up. My mom was always cooking it for us, and I was always sick of eating rice every freaking day. How I longed for the exotic food that the other kids in the neighborhood were eating (except the neighbors to our left...they were Vietnamese too and were eating the same rice dishes): the tacos, the spaghetti, the meat loaf. I remember being in 6th grade, and waiting around in the school cafeteria for school to start, I was asked by a classmate what I had for breakfast. My mom, who was already gone for work, had left a big pot of Chao Ga (Vietnamese rice porridge, the Chinese call it Congee) for us. When I started to describe to this young, white, all-American girl what I had for breakfast, she just looked at me like I was some sort of psycho. (This was also the elementary school where I got called into the principal's office because I was reading a Dungeons and Dragons book and they were afraid I was teaching witchcraft to all the nice Christian kids...true story.) So this experience and countless others like it made me feel out of place, and for a kid that had issues trying to fit in for most if his teenage years up until college, this just added to my anti-Vietnamese feelings. (It wasn't just the food, I hated going to Vietnamese mass during Christmas, and I hated being yelled at by my parents in a language I didn't understand...actually, that wasn't a bad thing.)

When I moved to Seattle for college, I was amazed that along the stretch called the "Ave" (University Ave) in the University District, among all the homeless and street kids (Ave Rats we called them) there were 4 or 5 different pho shops. These came as a great comfort on rainy afternoon days, and this being Seattle these days were often. Suddenly I was no longer not wanting Vietnamese food for dinner, but was actively searching it out. Going for Pho became my staple 1st date. (Seeing as none of these 1st dates amounted to much, I probably should have had a better dating strategy.) The best part: my college buddies weren't afraid or seemed to think of me differently because of the food I ate...in fact, they wished they could have had this food growing up. Rob, tall white guy from the Portland area, told me once how he loved going to get pho with someone who never had it before, to see how they would eat it. And he was right, I never noticed how others ate pho, how it was a different eating experience for everybody. (Jason would put a little noodle, a piece of meat, a bean sprout or two into his spoon then he would add a touch of sriracha and hoisin sauce and so each bite had the same amount of seasoning and flavor. Vince would add so much sriracha that his beef broth would turn into a sea of blood.) This was when I realized how badass and amazing the cuisine from my parent's homeland actually is, how food that is so simple can be so good. Every summer vacation, even though my mom would offer to cook tacos or spaghetti (self-taught because of my constant complaining as a child) I would ask her to make my favorite rice dishes or her pho or her banh xeo (Vietnamese fried crepe dish). I quit complaining about what we were eating for dinner, and actually asked my mom for directions on how to make these dishes so that I can cook it while I'm at school.

Then in 2001, I got to visit Vietnam. As a graduation gift from my parents, my sister Suzy and I went to Vietnam to see my parent’s homeland. While not every part of the trip was enlightening or even fun (too much dealing with money-grubbing relatives that I would never talk to ever again in my life) I got a whole new appreciation for my parents and everything about them. Mainly, I got to eat a whole lot of good food for pennies! The best bowl of beef pho I’ve ever had was at the garage of a man outside of Saigon who, while serving pho, was also giving haircuts as well as washing motorbikes. An all in one shop so to speak. The best bowl of pho ga (chicken) I had was after mass in Hanoi, upstairs in a restaurant that my dad said he went to growing up. Then there was the banh xeo place in Saigon that had customers driving right through the dining area to park their motorbikes in the back, while little lizards would jump onto the table to try to get a bite. Needless to say, I’ve never had banh xeo as good again. (I could go on and on about how great the food is, but I won’t. Just watch any Bourdain episode, either A Cook’s Tour or No Reservations, and watch at how much he respects and loves the Vietnamese food.)

So now I no longer am ashamed of the food my parent’s forced onto me as a child. Thanks to the ever changing food culture in America, where different ethnicities are showcasing their homeland’s food, it’s not as strange now for people to eat sushi or other Asian food that is not Chinese. (I could write a whole blog about what is considered Chinese food in the states…and I probably will…as my brother Tino described it in one of his posts, the Chinese food you eat here in the great USA is nothing like the food they eat in China.) And while people may not agree with me for eating hot noodles in the morning for breakfast (there’s always some comment at work whenever I’m eating Nong Shim instant noodles at 7:30AM in front of my computer), they aren’t judging me for it, nor should I judge them for eating hot oatmeal with raisins (EW!!!...you white people and your strange food...).