SaigonSighs 3

Food in Saigon comes in three categories. Street food, restaurant food and high end restaurant food.

Street food is cheap and good. The staples are:-

Banh Mi – basically a lighter than air baguette that really should be consumed withing a couple of hours of being baked. A left over from French colonialism that is better than the original. Filled with processed meats (mainly pork based) pate`s, sliced cucumbers and herbs and a dark coloured sauce, it’s a quick tasty tummy filler for about 50p. Banh Mi also comes as part of a popular breakfast called – banh mi oplaaaa (a hard long A sound) – see picture.

The national dish is Pho, pronounced Furrrrr with an up-down-up cadence. It’s a bowl of rice noodles in a hot beef bone watery broth with small pieces of thinly sliced beef which blanch off in the near to boiling hot broth. To this you add chille sauce, brown sauce and assorted herbs to taste. There are usually three herbs one of which is mint but I don’t know the names of the other two. One may be Basil but I’m not sure.

Bun Rieu is similar but is seafood based.

Hu Tieu Nam Vang (pronounced Ho chew nam vang)is originally a Cambodian dish. Once again a hot broth with fine noodles plus a couple of quail eggs. a couple of largeish prawns, some thin slices of pork / heart / liver. To taste you can add some bean sprouts / lettuce / and other herbs. Delicious

Restaurants are usually large, busy noisy places where customers are usually in family groups. Before entering check out the size of the chairs. the Vietnamese like small plastic chairs ( Europeans would consider them ‘children’s chairs) Asian people are far more flexible than Europeans and consider these chairs as normal.

Once I was having breakfast outside my hotel in Thamel Kathmandu Nepal and eavesdropping on two British doctors who were sat at the next table. They were discussing hip joint replacement operations. Those of you that know me will be aware that I’m the proud possessor of cobalt steel hip joints so I was interested in their conversation. The gist was that hip replacement was virtually unknown in Asia and that the reason could be their tradition of squatting to go to the toilet meant that they fully extended their hip joints twice a day and that this ‘exercise’ maintained their joints.

This is borne out by the fact that most work is done on the floor, not standing at a workbench. Squatting it seems is very comfortable!

More on food and drink next week.

Love and peace J