New dishes/ingredients tried that I’d never tried before:
Hearts of palm:
OK, I’ve probably had these before in salad, but these were braised like jackfruit when it’s trying to be fake meat, and looked like they were going to chew like shoe leather, but fell apart in the mouth pleasingly
Tonkin jasmine buds:
These were stir-fried simply with just a little bit of garlic at the extremely upscale Victoria Hotel in Châu Đốc. The dining room was full of raucous Australian seniors on a tour eating a fixed-menu meal, so we ate on the balcony overlooking the river and got covered in mosquitos as I savored these crisp buds, which tasted just like tea.
These were stir-fried simply with just a little bit of garlic at the extremely upscale Victoria Hotel in Châu Đốc. The dining room was full of raucous Australian seniors on a tour eating a fixed-menu meal, so we ate on the balcony overlooking the river and got covered in mosquitos as I savored these crisp buds, which tasted just like tea.
Green banana soup:
This was full of tofu and perilla leaves in addition to the bananas.
This was full of tofu and perilla leaves in addition to the bananas.
Conch:
It’s possible that an elderly Vietnamese gentleman fed me conch off a toothpick once at Cafe Artist in Garden Grove CA. However, if that was a different kind of snail, then this was my first time eating conch, which is a slender, coiled mollusk so sizable that it was served cut into four pieces inside its shell, after being drenched in fish sauce and grilled. After I ate the pieces, I drank the fish saucy juice!
It’s possible that an elderly Vietnamese gentleman fed me conch off a toothpick once at Cafe Artist in Garden Grove CA. However, if that was a different kind of snail, then this was my first time eating conch, which is a slender, coiled mollusk so sizable that it was served cut into four pieces inside its shell, after being drenched in fish sauce and grilled. After I ate the pieces, I drank the fish saucy juice!
Vietnamese olives
These sat in almost every market in the section with the fruit, looking like velour-covered pebbles. I had no idea what they were until Châu Đốc, where they were also displayed peeled and marinated. Oddly, the marinade was sugary.
These sat in almost every market in the section with the fruit, looking like velour-covered pebbles. I had no idea what they were until Châu Đốc, where they were also displayed peeled and marinated. Oddly, the marinade was sugary.
Dried persimmon
Set in stacks in the Đà Lạt market, the kind we sampled, the one in the open that flies were landing on, was sweet and had a great bite to it. The one we bought, the shrink-wrapped one protected from the elements, tasted like bark when we opened it at home later.
Set in stacks in the Đà Lạt market, the kind we sampled, the one in the open that flies were landing on, was sweet and had a great bite to it. The one we bought, the shrink-wrapped one protected from the elements, tasted like bark when we opened it at home later.
Salted duck egg cakes
Like a sponge cake filled with cold, rich egg yolk. The version in Vũng Tàu tasted like cornbread. The version in Saigon randomly had some soft cheese under the yolk.
Like a sponge cake filled with cold, rich egg yolk. The version in Vũng Tàu tasted like cornbread. The version in Saigon randomly had some soft cheese under the yolk.
Stingray hot pot
I did my research about local specialties and walked into this restaurant asking for this dish in well-accented Vietnamese, which (naturally) made the waiter think I was at least halfway fluent. This was unfortunate, as the combination of my bad listening skills and his thick Southern accent made me unable to understand phrases as simple as ‘Where are you from?’ or ‘How long have you been here?’ Bemused, he left us alone after we tried hard to communicate, but not before instructing us to give the rays time to sit in the bubbling tom-yum-esque broth. Stingray is something I have had once before barbecued at a high-end restaurant in Denver, and I didn’t like it. Here, it was the same dark, meaty, white-fleshed fish, but went much better with the tangy soup and accompanying (of course) fish sauce to dip it in. The broth also contained okra, bamboo, the usual millions of leaves, taro stems, and banana blossoms.
Best city to get seafood:
Sorry, Saigon, but: Vũng Tàu. The aforementioned stingray hotpot, the fact that we were able to buy three fresh crabs off the street for $10 (and that was probably the tourist price), the bánh khọt with perfect firm shrimp dominating the rice cake, the unlisted grilled fish place we found on a deserted corner after driving around in circles looking for a pre-researched grilled fish place, where the owner told us he’d been open for only ten days.
Meal that was delicious and maddening in equal parts:
Lá Dong Riềng Restaurant offered turmeric grilled sturgeon for nearly $10, and I can’t recall ever having had sturgeon, so I thought I’d try it. What came out was a half-palm sized – total – four slices of sturgeon, brilliantly yellow and blackened crunchy with garlic. It was perhaps the most immediately gratifying thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, tasting like a perfect mix of chả cá Lã Vọng and my mom’s potato latkes. Five bites and it was over, leaving me raging for more but not wanting to blow $100 on sturgeon. I still kind of wish I had.
Breath of fresh air:
The vegetable pizza at the above-mentioned Victoria Hotel. This accompanied the stir fried Tonkin jasmine buds, and was in fact the reason we were there, having seen a promotional sign from the street promising a whole medium-sized pizza with eggplant, zucchini, carrots, real mozzarella, and all sorts of rare-for-Vietnam toppings for ‘just’ $4. The first menu they offered mentioned nothing about the promotion, and we felt almost bad about asking, given that we’d just been ‘monsieur’ and ‘madame’d to a white-tableclothed, scallop-napkinned table and served starter bread with pumpkin butter, but we decided to soften the blow by also ordering the jasmine buds and some wincingly expensive fruit juice. By the way, the pizza was big enough to feed both of us for dinner AND breakfast the next day.
Weirdest misunderstanding of vegetarianism:
The man in Đà Lạt who, when informed that my companion was a vegetarian, quickly swept the bowl of broth away, removed the two ground pork balls, and replaced it. Normally, the word ‘chay’ – a close translation of ‘vegan’ – is understood at least and revered at most.
Weirdest misunderstanding, period
In Hà Tiên, I ordered salty lemonade (chanh muối) from a couple ladies with a cooler sitting in front of their house. What I received was a small plastic baggie – maybe the size of two of my thumbs – filled with sweet vanilla yogurt (yaourt). Have any two sets of words sounded less alike?
Worst place to eat delicious, fresh, cheap, street crab
In your hotel room. Because even if the proprietess hands you a pestle to crack the carapaces and legs, and forks to dig the meat out, and plates for all this mess to land on, your hotel room will still smell like crab for the rest of your trip, even if you open the windows during a big lightning storm. However, this is your only choice should you choose to indulge in the pleasures of theVũng Tàu fish market, and you should, for this is where we saw the freshest seafood on offer in all of Vietnam. Still-wriggling multicolored shrimp tried to escape out of colanders filled with water as their vendor constantly recaptured them and threw them back in, at least 8 different varieties of crab were stacked with claws and bodies bound, snails bubbled in vats – not bubbled from being boiled, bubbled from breathing – and red snapper as big as my thigh lay piled with bright eyes on ice.
—
I may have enjoyed Vietnam, culinarily speaking, a tiny bit more when I ate meat more frequently and enthusiastically, but this trip allowed me to sample its vegan side, and I still believe that Vietnam would be a great country in which to be vegan. Aside from the beginning-and-middle lunar month days where lots of restaurants turn vegan, the dedicated vegan restaurants have multiple-page-long menus filled with 10 ways to cook eggplant, 25 salads, 50 ways to cook jackfruit, 100 ways to cook tofu, and, of course, perfect fake-meat replicas of all the meat dishes at surrounding restaurants. This makes American mainstays like Veggie Grill look like they’re just not trying.
I did my research about local specialties and walked into this restaurant asking for this dish in well-accented Vietnamese, which (naturally) made the waiter think I was at least halfway fluent. This was unfortunate, as the combination of my bad listening skills and his thick Southern accent made me unable to understand phrases as simple as ‘Where are you from?’ or ‘How long have you been here?’ Bemused, he left us alone after we tried hard to communicate, but not before instructing us to give the rays time to sit in the bubbling tom-yum-esque broth. Stingray is something I have had once before barbecued at a high-end restaurant in Denver, and I didn’t like it. Here, it was the same dark, meaty, white-fleshed fish, but went much better with the tangy soup and accompanying (of course) fish sauce to dip it in. The broth also contained okra, bamboo, the usual millions of leaves, taro stems, and banana blossoms.
Best city to get seafood:
Sorry, Saigon, but: Vũng Tàu. The aforementioned stingray hotpot, the fact that we were able to buy three fresh crabs off the street for $10 (and that was probably the tourist price), the bánh khọt with perfect firm shrimp dominating the rice cake, the unlisted grilled fish place we found on a deserted corner after driving around in circles looking for a pre-researched grilled fish place, where the owner told us he’d been open for only ten days.
Meal that was delicious and maddening in equal parts:
Lá Dong Riềng Restaurant offered turmeric grilled sturgeon for nearly $10, and I can’t recall ever having had sturgeon, so I thought I’d try it. What came out was a half-palm sized – total – four slices of sturgeon, brilliantly yellow and blackened crunchy with garlic. It was perhaps the most immediately gratifying thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, tasting like a perfect mix of chả cá Lã Vọng and my mom’s potato latkes. Five bites and it was over, leaving me raging for more but not wanting to blow $100 on sturgeon. I still kind of wish I had.
Breath of fresh air:
The vegetable pizza at the above-mentioned Victoria Hotel. This accompanied the stir fried Tonkin jasmine buds, and was in fact the reason we were there, having seen a promotional sign from the street promising a whole medium-sized pizza with eggplant, zucchini, carrots, real mozzarella, and all sorts of rare-for-Vietnam toppings for ‘just’ $4. The first menu they offered mentioned nothing about the promotion, and we felt almost bad about asking, given that we’d just been ‘monsieur’ and ‘madame’d to a white-tableclothed, scallop-napkinned table and served starter bread with pumpkin butter, but we decided to soften the blow by also ordering the jasmine buds and some wincingly expensive fruit juice. By the way, the pizza was big enough to feed both of us for dinner AND breakfast the next day.
Weirdest misunderstanding of vegetarianism:
The man in Đà Lạt who, when informed that my companion was a vegetarian, quickly swept the bowl of broth away, removed the two ground pork balls, and replaced it. Normally, the word ‘chay’ – a close translation of ‘vegan’ – is understood at least and revered at most.
Weirdest misunderstanding, period
In Hà Tiên, I ordered salty lemonade (chanh muối) from a couple ladies with a cooler sitting in front of their house. What I received was a small plastic baggie – maybe the size of two of my thumbs – filled with sweet vanilla yogurt (yaourt). Have any two sets of words sounded less alike?
Worst place to eat delicious, fresh, cheap, street crab
In your hotel room. Because even if the proprietess hands you a pestle to crack the carapaces and legs, and forks to dig the meat out, and plates for all this mess to land on, your hotel room will still smell like crab for the rest of your trip, even if you open the windows during a big lightning storm. However, this is your only choice should you choose to indulge in the pleasures of theVũng Tàu fish market, and you should, for this is where we saw the freshest seafood on offer in all of Vietnam. Still-wriggling multicolored shrimp tried to escape out of colanders filled with water as their vendor constantly recaptured them and threw them back in, at least 8 different varieties of crab were stacked with claws and bodies bound, snails bubbled in vats – not bubbled from being boiled, bubbled from breathing – and red snapper as big as my thigh lay piled with bright eyes on ice.
—
I may have enjoyed Vietnam, culinarily speaking, a tiny bit more when I ate meat more frequently and enthusiastically, but this trip allowed me to sample its vegan side, and I still believe that Vietnam would be a great country in which to be vegan. Aside from the beginning-and-middle lunar month days where lots of restaurants turn vegan, the dedicated vegan restaurants have multiple-page-long menus filled with 10 ways to cook eggplant, 25 salads, 50 ways to cook jackfruit, 100 ways to cook tofu, and, of course, perfect fake-meat replicas of all the meat dishes at surrounding restaurants. This makes American mainstays like Veggie Grill look like they’re just not trying.
