Porked

This is one of my favourite dishes in Vietnam, Banh trang phoi suong (literally means "rice pancake exposed in the dew (at night)". It's so simple it's rude. Centre stage we have thin slices of boiled pork, nothing fancy going on, just the pork. The surrounding action has the pork trapped, no escape from a fate worth scoffing. Rustic style rice paper, a sweet nuoc mam (fish sauce), pickled carrots and onion-leek type thing, raw beansprouts and lengthways sliced cucumber. And then comes that mighty herb trough. Trang bang, by the way, is the name of the province the dish comes from.

That's a gargantuan set of greens in anyone's book. It's like no other platter on the Vietnamese table. A plate of this stuff will bring the David Attenborough out of anyone. Dig, delve and forage-mungussly good. Pluck a few leaves of what you fancy, sling them in a rice paper along with your meat, and whatever else you can squeeze in, roll, dip and nibble, munch or hog. I hog, you're probably a bit more polite. The big glossy green leaf is the special fella here. Name anyone? I fully intend to dissect this whole plate at another sitting. Any help mucho appreciated.

There's no real cooking involved here, a bit of boiled pork and someone slings the nuoc mam together. The whole thing's more of a gardening experience than a cooking one. Someone somewhere in this town must have a killer herb garden and this restaurant knows who that is. Whenever we grab this as a take home job there's always enough herbs leftover to hash into something else the next day. Alternatively, we sometimes order an extra plate or two of pork and rice paper to take the same trip the next day. There must be other places serving this in Saigon, although I can't recall seeing one, but when it's this good I'm not really looking for anywhere else anyway.

They serve a few other dishes. I've covered the slurpworthy Banh Canh from here before. Banh trang phoi suong for two with drinks is less than 40,000VD. From Quan Co Tam - Banh Canh Trang Bang, 188 Nguyen Van Thu Street, Phuong Da Kao, District 1. Deffo worth a visit.

Comments

[C]

Yes, I love this dish, it's so healthy, hands-on fun! did you remember to wash your hands? :-)

[Michelle]

Wow, that just looks AMAZING! I'm not sure what that veggie's called, I'm not even sure what it is (looks a bit like dangdelion to me, does it taste the same?). When I made this at home I usually dip it with "mam nem" with TONS of fresh chili :)

Did you try B) 1. dish in the menu? It's pretty good, same deal as the pork dish but with grilled fish. I made it at home but the fish doesn't taste the same in Canada :(

[cour marly]

Oh I adore this dish. It's a must have when I used to travel to Vietnam regularly. My asst and I would pig out at this place in District 3. Delectable. I miss it so!

[ecr]

Banh trang was featured on the back page of the Saigon Times a couple wks ago. It's a specialty of Tay Ninh and available at Hoang Ty, branches on Ly Thai To St, Dist 10 and Truong Quoc Dung St. in Phu Nuan.
As for the greens, according to the article, in addition to the usual lettuce, perilla, basil etc., look for young leaves of mango and starfruit trees, and vi, dinh lang, and nhai (all untranslated) leaves.

The owner of a little roadside place about halfway betw. Saigon and the Caodai temple, where I first tried it a couple yrs ago, said most of the greens on her plate are wild, picked by herself from the banks of a nearby river (don't want to think too hard about that, though).

[pieman]

I've only ever tried the Banh Canh and the Banh Trang here Michelle - both, as I probably made reasonably clear in the posting above, are BRILLIANT. Herbwork and alternative locations appreciated ecr. It's dishes like this you just cannot recreate outside Vietnam, IMO.

[spottiswoode]

I really do love your pics of viet food - wish they had good & authentic & cheap viet food in singapore :(

[stuffed]

The big glossy purpleish green in your photo is called La Chua (Sour leaf). This tree grows to about 3 - 4 metre high, preferrably on water banks. Only young leaves are picked for salads. The leaf has a very sharp taste, like lemon juice.

[XINERGY]

very interesting. here by way of kottke.

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