A second tour through Vietnam

I should be a politician with my awesome skills of keeping promises, maybe the mayor of food.  So back in one of my first posts I wrote about the bomb diggity sandwich found at Vietnamese joints, and now I am returning to titillate your senses with my other favorite meal bún.

I tried to make an honest effort of going to a different restaurant than the one that I visited in that previous post, if nothing else to get away from the stellar background music, but it was not in the cards.  I left work and headed north up Fry Road to visit Phở 88 located just north of Morton Road, but evidently they are closed on Mondays so I was dejected and forced to scramble.  Alas, I ended up back at Phở Mai on Westgreen at I-10. 

I did however spice it up this time and roll with a completely new dish that had nothing in common with the sandwich minus a healthy portion of pork.

First, a little background information on bún thịt nướng giò, from hence forth it shall be known as #65 since that is what it is on the menu and I am a lazy writer so deal with it.  The name is basically a description of what is in the dish, bún being the term for the vermicelli rice noodles, thịt referring to the pork, nướng means it comes with fish sauce, and giò means it has an egg roll.  Now that does not include all of the other fresh veggies piled in the bowl but you will just have to wait until later to see those.

As I mentioned before fish sauce is one of the greatest condiments ever invented, this fermented sauce derived from fish kicks everything up a notch or two.  It is basically a salty sauce similar to Worcestershire sauce that isn’t quite so pungent.

The other rock star condiment that I had to use on this dish (as well as most other dishes when it is an option) was the famous Sriracha or as I commonly hear it referred to, “the rooster sauce”.  This chili hot sauce is awesome, and it belongs on most Asian dishes, if not many other cuisines that can use a kick in the pants.

The bowl that shows up is quite frankly gigantic, and as you can see filled to the brim.  The flavor components on the surface are obvious, chopped pork, egg roll, along with piles of green onions, peanuts, carrots, and a sprig of cilantro.  Basically, this bowl is a colorful party begging you to shovel it into your mouth.  The Vietnamese egg roll is a different creature than the Chinese egg rolls that many of you are used to, it has a meat mix with some pork and prawns, along with your usual leafy veggie filling, but the twist in it is mushrooms, giving it a much darker filling than you usually find in other cuisines.  For those of you who hate mushrooms do not wince and vomit on me, it is not an overpowering flavor and just blends nicely with the rest of the mix.

Upon receiving the bowl one of my first tasks is to get my mix on, doing this brings up the veggies hiding on the bottom of the bowl, and mixes the rest in the fish sauce that has settled in on the bottom.  Doing this mix causes the lettuce and sprouts at the bottom to get more evenly spread out throughout the dish.

This dish is a large serving, but you don’t lose a single piece of flavor to size, and at under $7 it is a good price for a full on flavor bên (according to Google translate that means party but I am too lazy to research more beyond that).

Enjoy.

What friends are for...

So as I mentioned previously in this blog, I love to step outside my comfort zone and try something new.  I did this the other day with my coworker Jenn and a small Filipino restaurant called Pinoy Kusina (Pinoy is a term referring to Filipino people, much like saying Dutch for people from the Netherlands) located on Mason Road in Katy.

We randomly stumbled on this place via the magic that is Google, and Jenn scouted it out one evening with her family using their expertise in Filipino cuisine to make sure that it was up to code and would be worthy of a first time experience for ignorant me.  Her exact words to me that night were “The chicken adobo and pansit were just like home made… Perfect J”.  Of course this meant nothing to me since I had never heard those foods but I took her word for it and the approval of her Filipino husband Jeff.

So one Friday we decided to venture there for lunch, from what I could tell based on the website they offer only a few items each day (I am a firm believer of the do a few things right instead of trying to do it all) and they rotate those items based on the day of the week.  Even better for the guy who was looking to truly get a new experience was the fact that  at lunch they served the food up buffet style so you can try even more foods in one meal instead of just ordering one dish.  This definitely excited the fat kid in me and so how could I possibly say no to this offer?

We pulled up to the small café in a strip center, about as unassuming as you could imagine, it was the kind of place where if you were not looking for it you would most likely pass right on by.  They also have a grocery store on the opposite side of the shopping center that way you brave souls out there could cook with authentic ingredients at home. 

My first sampling from the buffet was a salad, with the main ingredient being mangoes, but there were also onions, tomatoes, and some form of fish.  It was pungent, but the mangoes took the edge off.  I cannot say it was my favorite dish, but it definitely was an exotic flavor to kick the meal off right.

 My first real lesson for the art of eating Filipino food was that rice goes with everything, the proprietor set me straight on this topic as I was eying what to pile on my plate first.  The rice was my favorite style, white steamed rice with a good level of stickiness so it clumped together and easily went along with any dish I paired it up with.  As you can see in the picture I went with three different items, pork adobo, a vegetable stir fry, and chicken in a yellow curry.  All of these dishes had an awesome sauce on them, but by far my favorite was the pork adobo, slow cooked pork that was sliced right through by the fork and had a killer flavor.  The curry was good but the chicken was a little tough for my liking, and the veggies were a great side.

Then came the second trip to the buffet, and of course the adobo had to make a second appearance. I also loaded up a dish that had sausage, chicken, mango, and some veggies but it was by far my least favorite dish of the day so it only got a sampling.  Then came the dish known as Sisig, which I assume was a pork dish in a sour sauce with some peppers in for good spice.

Needless to say I am now officially a fan of Filipino food thanks to my introduction by Jenn and Jeff.  If you happen to find a Filipino restaurant in your neck of the woods don’t be afraid to jump in and try something a little different in your diet.

Where's The Muzak?

Today’s adventure took us to the ancient Southeast Asian land of Vietnam, a place with a rich history and even more delicious food.  My foodventure on the other hand took me all the way to Katy, Texas to Phở Mai on Wintergreen and I-10.  This place is good, but I don’t think they are expecting any awards for service in the near future.  At times they remind me of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, you sit down and immediately they ask if you are ready to order and if you are not, so help you God you better be snappy about your decision.

Now for many people the first thought that comes to mind when you start talking Vietnamese food is phở, the piping hot bowl of soup that seems to come in every variety under the sun, and always with a big plate of roughage.  However, in my mind there is a time and place for that 100,000 degree bowl of liquid and it certainly is not July in Houston. 

Nothing like a rotating condiment station to know you are in good hands.

My personal favorite in the Vietnamese noodle house is a scrumptious bowl of heaven known as bún, specifically one that I am not even going to bother trying to write out but it has char grilled pork and an eggroll on vermicelli noodles and veggies.  With of course the Vietnamese staple sauce known as fish sauce, we will not go into details of what it is or how it is made (saw it once on the Travel Channel), no need to cost you your appetite

. 

Alas, today was not the day for that either.  Today my friend was a day for the most glorious sandwich of them all…  A sandwich that makes Subway’s famed $5 foot long look like child’s play.  Yes my friend we are talking about the famed Bánh mì, a fantastic combo of baguette, grilled meat, some variation of veggies, and more cilantro sprigs than you can shake a stick at.  You may ask yourself “Why on earth would there be French baguette running around in the jungles of Vietnam?”, excellent question, for those of you unaware of the history the French once colonized this land and slapped the moniker of French Indochina.  As is often the case when French people show up they leave something behind (usually their guns if in the case of war), and this time it just so happened to include their delicious white bread.

I love this sandwich because of its simplicity, there is no heavy sauce covering up the flavor, just some cucumbers, carrots, nicely flavored grilled pork, and of course a butt load of cilantro which can easily be removed if that isn’t your groove.  The other amazing benefit is that this thing is $3.95, of course the price which leaves room in the budget for another great little item.

Gỏi cuốn, or the summer roll as I have seen it called other places, is always a good side choice.  A nice cool combo of shrimp, pork, and vermicelli all rolled up in some rice paper.  Basically this is an all around cool meal for a nice sweltering day here in Houston. 

Now about that interesting title, normally when I have eaten here in the past I have been serenaded through my noodles or sandwich to the smooth sounds of Kenny G or a nice instrumental version of some Celine Dion song.  It was always comforting to be reminded of being in an elevator, or maybe doctor’s waiting room surrounded by plague victims while I scarf down my meal.  Today Sarah McLachlan was singing to me while I ate, and all I could think of was those SPCA commercials where they show the abused animals.  Kind of a bad feeling when the running joke of Asian food is cat and images of the animal shelter rolling through my mind while I eat some meat, but have no fear, as usual none of it went to waste.