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So after several months, I am beginning to know what I am eating (maybe 75% of the time) and venture into new territory. The discovery of several new vegetarian restaurants has also aided in this transformation, allowing me to venture away from the standard plate of greens, rice and tofu into a whole new world of Vietnamese delicacies which are usually only for those not apposed to the consumption of unidentifiable marine and animal life forms.
One of the favorite restaurants in Nha Trang is a place called Co Tam, an all vegetarian restaurant with my two favorite dishes, papaya salad and bun xeo. Papaya salad is wonderful, a mix of green papaya, roasted peanuts, various herbs, fake shrimp, chopped tofu, cucumbers, and carrots all doused in a limy, sweet-spicy sauce. There are also variations on this salad where the papaya is replaced with mango or seaweed (also very good and nothing like Japanese seaweed salad). The salad is always served with a basket of rice crackers flecked with black sesame seed which are perfect for scooping up the salad. Bun Xeo is also a personal favorite which is available all over the south and varies widely depending on your location. Basically it is a rice flour crepe, usually filled with seafood (in Nha Trang) or meat (Saigon), bean sprouts, chives, and served with greens and sauce. In Saigon bun xeo is a huge (think of the largest crepe you have ever seen), very thin and filled with (depending on what you order) vegetables, pork, shrimp or squid and served with a huge basket of leaves. In order to consume you take a leaf, break off a piece of the bun xeo, place it in the leaf, roll it up, dip in sauce, and consume. I had the pleasure of going out to a vegetarian restaurant in Saigon where sampled this delicacy, and was quite please that I had mastered one Vietnamese food.
However, little did I know the bun xeo of Saigon is a unique beast, and bun xeo in Nha Trang is a very different animal. Here the crepes are very small, the size of an average American pancake with shrimp and squid cooked right into the crepe on this unique pan made especially for the activity. Here bun xeo is served with a plate of greens which have been all chopped up, and apparently the eating technique is completely different. The correct operation here is to take a bowl, ladle in sauce (this was all gesticulated by an old women who seemed to severely doubt my abilities to feed myself.), put in the pancake, chop it all up, toss in some greens, and then consume the salad-cum-crepe concoction with chopsticks. Very good, but different, although this is the bun xeo I have come to expect, although I realize that if I go somewhere I will probably end up with something else entirely, least I feel lulled into some type of food complacency. There is however, one thing that you must be wary of when eating bun xeo in Nha Trang. Fish herb. What is fish herb, you might ask? I certainly had never experienced it until I got to Vietnam either, but there is this sneaky herb they put in the greens that looks like ivy and tastes just like fish. Really, I did not think it was possible for a green leaf to taste this much like fish but it really does. Finally last week I decided to get to the bottom of the fish herb situation so I could at least learn to avoid it (although I am slowly developing a taste for the stuff) so we ask the waiter at the restaurant what it is called. He said it was called diep ca, literal translation lettuce fish. Go figure, we could have thought that one out ourselves.
I have also had the opportunity to try some new soups, branching out from pho, my standard order at the Vietnamese restaurant at home. One of the best I have tried so far is Bun Rieu, usually made with crab, but at the vegetarian restaurant made with tofu disguised to look like crab, with some seaweed (I think) thrown in to give it that sea-y flavor. The soup has a nice, thick broth with tomato overtones, but also pleasantly different, with chunks of fried tofu, tofu-crab, imitation meat (this was a little rubbery, but it’s better then the chunks of congealed blood that are in the read version), pineapple, thick bun (round) noodles and some miscellaneous UFVs (unidentifiable floating vegetables). This is all served accompanied by a plate of shredded lettuce, banana leaves, mint, and basil which adds a nice, fresh flavor.
My greatest triumph, however, was finally discovering finally discovering bun cha gio, my summer Vietnamese staple which has proved illusive up until this point. Bun cha gio is fresh bun noodles served on a bed of lettuce, bean sprouts, and chopped cucumber with spring rolls, fake (or real) meat scattered on top, sprinkled with peanuts to round off the dish. The true beauty of this dish lies in the fact it is severed cold, a necessity in a climate where it is usually 90-100 degrees. I assumed (wrongly), that since this is available at every Vietnamese restaurant in Boston, it would be easy to find here, but this was not so. I actually found it merely by accident one day when I was eating at my favorite veggie place and I saw bowls and bowls of the stuff being brought to other. The next time I went, I waited until I saw it emerge from the kitchen (it was the full moon so food was flying out that day, world to the wise, if you visit Vietnam, don’t go to the vegetarian places during the full moon, go the other 26 days a month when its you and a few monks) and simply pointed to it. However, since that point, I have come to notice the trappings of bun cha gio everywhere, so maybe it has been there all along and I was simply oblivious (and had no idea what to order).
So, these are some of the highlights, I continue to explore and I am currently working through the menu of noodles at the vegetarian restaurant. I figure I can deal with almost anything assuming there are no intestines, blood, tripe, trotters, ears, or other strange animal parts. Or fish herb, although it is growing on me.
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