noodlepie

Best noodle soup in Saigon

The 'Best Noodle Soup in Saigon' Taste Everything Award goes to a 7,000VD (US$0.45) bowl of Bun Mam and the lady chef who simply goes by the name of Ba Sau (Number 36). She's been serving this one noodle soup from her small six-seater stall in an alleyway market in District 10 for the last 25 years. Bun Mam is just one of a swarm of native vermicelli noodle soups on offer throughout Vietnam, but in my opinion, it is Vietnam's soup star and Ba Sau serves the best I've found in Saigon.

So what is it? Pictured above we have part of the assembly line; bun (vermicelli noodles), soup, aubergine and that green end of spring onion-alike on your right, which is not a spring onion at all, but something called he - a kind of garlic chive. Inside the table top glass cabinet are pre-cooked prawns and fatty, roasted pork complete with a crispy fat trim. Some Bun mam sellers also throw in squid and fish, but not here. The dish originates from Soc Trang Province in Vietnam's Mekong Delta.

The soup stock is the key. It's a pork bone/fish combo number rammed full of goodies. Ba Sau throws in a no nonsense, roughly chopped up bag of fresh lemon grass and there’s a healthy splosh or ten of Mam tom, that's the purple prawn paste monster pictured above and the one providing the punch and the pong here. Bun mam does whiff.

Next up is the shrubbery pictured above. It comes on a side plate or ready blanched in your soup - your choice, but for the record I keep my hedgerow raw, add a squeeze of lemon and go easy on the yellow chilli slivers. This amazing bush is peculiar to Bun mam. The wee green chap to the top right, rau dang (a variety of cress), has the strongest flavour and is often served with Chao ca (Rice porridge with fish). According to local food lore, rau dang is very useful if you're suffering from a stinking cold. The purple fella is bong sung (water lilly root). We also have raw beansprouts, raw rau muong (stripped morning glory) and the green leaf trio of rau thom (sorrel), rau que (basil) and one sprig of sour rau ca which is a powerful and unusual 'fish mint'.

Moving on to the taste. The soup is a slightly sweet, complex, muddy Mekong flood of fermented prawn paste and chilli lavered into a thick earthy stock. The aubergine has had time to soak the soup up and each velvet bite squeezes soup juice from the veggie core. It's an unlikely sounding hit, but a hit it undoubtedly is.

It tastes blinkin’ marvellous which is why I have given it, and Ba Sau, the 'Best Noodle Soup in Saigon' award for the 2005 Taste Everything Food Awards. NB: I must thank Noodlepie readers, Ecr and Vickie for helping me with hedgerow herb translation work. See full list of awards.

Bitches broth

I'm a big fan of the many varied Vietnamese soups here in Saigon. Something of a soup stalker, if you will. But what, I hear you ask, is my favourite? That’s a tough one right enough. Don't think I haven't mulled it over. I've thought of little else for the last eight years. But as of January 2005, I’m 98.89% certain of the one I’d choose. But, am I sure enough to commit that conviction to blogdom? Hmmm… Let’s put it another way.

If I was banged up in Bellmarsh taking a shower and three 200lb sweaty, tattooed bitches had my legs spread, neck held in a fist vice, one side of my face melded to ceramic wall tiles and the threat of an afternoon at the ragged end of the prison meat train very real and rather imminent. If I found myself in such a spot of bother and was then asked what my favourite Vietnamese soup was, I’d have to own up and say, “Bun mam" But, I'd say it very, very loudly taking extreme care to enunciate my consonants.

Bun mam is blindin’. This penny-pinching troll stallholder on the local market is the only mean minded witch seller of this powerful broth that I’ve found within a mile radius of Pieman Towers. Bun mam doesn’t appear to be as ubiquitous as Bun rieu, Pho, Banh canh cua or Hu tieu. I’m not sure why that is, or even if that statement is factually correct, but I don’t think Bun mam is held in such high regard as Vietnam's better known super-soups.

So what is it? We covered it briefly before and back then I promised to delve deeper. I'll be honest with you, I haven’t journeyed much further at all, just around the corner actually. But I do have a few more factoids to hand. Pictured above we have part of the Bun mam assembly line, bun (vermicelli noodles), soup, aubergine and that green end of spring onion-alike, which is not a spring onion, on your right is called he, (Sorry, I don't know the English. Any help appreciated). In the table top glass cabinet this thief lady stores pre-cooked prawns and fatty, roasted pork. Some Bun mam sellers also throw in squid and fish, but not the tight-fisted bitch seller at this stall. The soup stock is the key. It’s rammed full of goodies, not sure what exactly, but I do know there’s a healthy splosh or ten of Mam tom, the purple prawn paste monster, in there. That’s the one providing the punch and the pong here. Bun mam does whiff.

Next up is the shrubbery. Now, if anyone can tell me why different Vietnamese soups come with different hedgerow clippings, or none at all, I’d love to know. The amazing bush pictured above is peculiar to Bun mam. That wee green chap to the top right, rau dang, has the strongest flavour (English anyone?) and is often served with Chao ca (Rice porridge with fish) and is apparently useful if you're suffering from a stinking cold like me at the moment. The purple fella is bong sung (English again?). We also have raw beansprouts,  raw rau muong (raw stripped morning glory) and the green leaf trio of rau thom (Sorrel), rau que (Urr... English?) and one sprig of sour rau ca which is a powerful and unusual 'fish mint'.

Moving on to the taste. It’s a slightly sweet, complex, muddy flood of fermented prawn paste and chilli lavered into a thick earthy stock. I could blabber on for hours about it, but to be honest I don’t really know what I'm talking about, what's in it or how it's really made. However, I do know I couldn't possibly come close to reproducing it even if I did know. It tastes blinkin’ marvellous.

I visit this lying cheat seller about once a week. I first tried it hand delivered to Pieman Towers, pictured below. Impressed, a month or two later I popped down stallside for a butchers myself. If you have a Vietnamese face at this sly businesslike stall, it'll cost you 7,000VD. Difficult to disguise a pasty Brit face anywhere and I got wholloped for a full 10,000VD for my first purchase. I briefly challenged the cheating scum elderly trader in my pathetic, pidgin Vietnamese, but the evil one she wasn’t having any of it. I didn’t want to make Satan’s mistress her lose her faeces in public and so I sloped off, soup in hand, ego singed.

A follow-up visit a week later, accompanied by a Vietnamese face, and this two-faced harpy grey-haired stall-holder told my accomplice, “NOW, he knows the real price, he can have it for 7,000 dong.” In so doing I broke noodlepie’s number one rule, ‘Never return to a seller who diddles the dumb foreigner. No matter how good the grub is.’ There is no rule number two. But Bun mam is THAT good. Yes - good enough even to break noodlepie-law for. But, if you ever fancy a fill at this arch criminal's lair stall holder’s table, watch your pennies or she’ll shaft you. Prison style.

Street Bun Mam

There's one thing that's becomes disturbingly clear after rolling around the food blogging circuit for a wee while. I, and by 'I' I suppose I really mean 'we', eat far more than we blog - well I do... I'm sure this is true for most scoff-bloggers. Here's a prime example I've never blogged up before. Once a week or so, when I'm busy grafting, a lunchtime dish winds up at Pieman towers via our homehelp. I don't always know what it'll be, but I'm always game. Unfortunately, I don't always have the time to gad about the city searching out hot new joints and so, the home delivery, surprise factor works well. I know this bowl of Bun Mam originated somewhere on Cach Mang Thanh Tam street, somewhere in District 10 or 3 and I know it cost 10,000VD for the big bowl, but that's all I know.

Bun Mam is yet another... (yawn, yawn... Are these getting boring yet?) noodle soups which defy the definition 'soup'. In among this lot I unearthed; prawns, pork, fish, aubergine, spring onion and squid. Oh... and a reasonably thick bun (vermicelli noodle). You not only get the herb plate above, which comprises; 10 different veggies including Bong Sung (a purple thing. And 'No' I have no idea what this one's called in English), Cu Neo, which is the soft spongy fella, looks a bit like celery in the pic above and is a 'must' for a blindin' Canh Chua Ca and then there's Bap Chuoi, or banana flower. I had trouble with my definitions for this tricky chap on my previous Bun Bo Hue post, but I know my ground now. The soup is sweet with plenty of chili cutting through. In fact, this soup is utterly, gobfillingly gorgeous. Nothing short of a revelation. I cannot find fault with it. I promise to sniff out the address for this and blog in far more detail. It really is just too good to ignore the finer details on this one. I'll keep you posted.