noodlepie

Spot the broth

Five days ago I set what was only the second competition in this blog's lifetime. Spot the broth wasn't easy by any stretch of the most elastic of imaginations, but the response was tremendous. I spent the best part of the last two days wading through the emails, bribes and weeding out any suspected vote riggers. Finally we have a winner... well nearly. Lifegoeson got the dish right after first coming up with three possible culprits, but didn't get the price or the location.

Stroll the perimeter of Ben Thanh market in District 1 and you'll find a selection of street sellers and makeshift scoffshacks. I'm here to find a goi cuon seller I spotted a few weeks back, but it seems she's split Saigon and in her place I find this bun rieu merchant. She tells me her river crabmeat, tofu, tomato and blood noodle soup is really very ngon (delicious) and not a little dac biet (special). She's hardly likely to tell me it's a heap of shit, but I like the look of her stall, clean, nice display of condiments, rustic bamboo effect and tourist wet dream conehead hat.

Take a delve inside her pot and things only get better. Check out that whalloping great hunk of minced crabmeat top left and the acres of fried tofu cubes in among that thick red slurpworthy swamp. I can't afford the sniffablog add on tool here at noodlepie, but believe me when I say the fab stench emanating from this vat will blow your nose clean off As bun rieu goes this isn't cheap - a staggering 8,000VD to be exact. The cheapest I've scored in Saigon is 3,000VD. 3-4,000VD seems to be the regular price around town.

However, my limited Vietnamese vocabulary and less than ropey listening ability tells me (I think) that what ratchets up the price at this deluxe dual basket pavement level outfit is some wee dried shrimp she adds to the broth which others commonly do not. Location could also have something to do with it. Downtown prices are often double the deal in the 'burbs. But, this is killer bun rieu, not in the literal sense - it won't actually kill you, but in the, "Yummo, that really is a jolly fine broth" kinda way. Highly recommended, this is top soup. Oh...and well done to lifegoeson. I'll make the next competition a real toughie.

Bargain broth

If it's cheapsville I'm after this is the stall I drop by. She serves two dishes only, Canh bun and Bun rieu cua. I've yet to gobble her Canh bun, but have splashed out on her Bun rieu cua on several occasions. It costs just 3,000VD. That's one whole thousand dong cheaper than the younger, more glamorous, stallholder two steps and a horse's sneeze along the alleyway. But, is it any better? Well, no it's not, but she is up against the best Bun rieu I've ever tried. That said, this ain't no slouch. The Bun rieu cua here is far darker (sorry no National Geographic macro closeup wankery today) and is more frugal on the spamsticks than her snazzy competitor.

However, she's one of the chirpier stall holders down the market and even though her broth isn't Olympic, I do enjoy pulling up a pew under her brolly for a slurp 'n' burp now and again. If you've yet to discover the delights of Bun rieu here at noodlepie, start you journey with Google juice. we've covered this beast several times previously.

Of all the stalls down the local shopping precinct, there are only two that I've spotted with stall front signs. Unfortunately for the hopeless, bumbling nguoi tay balo's of this world, if you don't know your Vietnamese food, sign-less stalls won't help you as you pound your way up this back passage.

Now, does anyone know what profit there is in a healthy, fresh soup that goes for 3,000VD at a stall like this? 'Cos I'm buggered if I can figure it out.

For the clueless the handy noodlepie currency converter should help

3,000VD = 5.5 Russian Roubles, 20.3 Albanian Lek, 0.14 Jordanian Dinar, 0.52 Samoan Tala or not much of anything really.

Bumper bowl of Bun Rieu

Bun Rieu is one of those ‘soup-come-stew-come-chuck-in-whatever-u-like just-make-sure-you-add-noodles’ dishes – there are a lorra, lorra those on the streets of Saigon, believe me - and it ranks up there with the best of 'em. We’ve covered Bun Rieu before at a stall along Le Thanh Ton street, we also bent bowlwards down a District 10 alleyway, so I won’t go over the finer points again here. This is another one of those dishes that appear roughly twice per week hand-delivered to Pieman Towers. This bumper nutritious bowl came from somewhere along Ky Dong Street in District 3, was accompanied by the hedgerow below plus a wee bag of mam tom and cost 8,000VD – that’s as much as I know. So, nothing new here, but a decent rendition, quality lunchtime nosh and an interesting comparison with previous Bun Rieu. If I ever make it to the stall itself, I’ll blog more.

Alley cat cooks

This alleyway in District 12 is much like a zillion other Saigon rabbit warrens. It functions as a market from 5am and street stalls start shuffling their feet by 6am before shutting up shop, or moving location around mid-day. If you come across a nondescript alleyway like this it's well worth poking your nose up its entrance to see what you can sniff out. More often than not this is where Saigon's crack cooks crank out superb home-tweaked renditions from the extensive Vietnamese kitchen hit parade.

This stall is a house, a kitchen and a restaurant all in one. No signs, no menu, no napkins, no fuss - just grub. Like all the best street stalls, it's a one dish show - Bun rieu (Crabmeat noodle soup) - it's a pieman fave and after yesterday's, similar, but more basic, Canh bun I couldn't resist comparing notes when I stumbled across this stall. I counted four separate stalls down this alley, each serving a different noodle dish. Not one stall has a sign up to advertise its wares or to help clueless foreigners. These alleyways are strictly local affairs. Everybody knows Mrs. such-and-such serves Bun rieu at number 23 and Mrs. such-and-such churns out Pho at number 10 etc.

You can be certain if you nip down an alleyway and there's only one stall flogging Bun rieu along its entire length it's selling it 'cos the locals eat that particular dish there and nowhere else. Vietnamese folk are discerning about their food and they love to gossip. If a stall is crap, word spreads, no-one goes and it shuts down. The theory, according to pieman, goes like this. Over time, in any given street or alleyway, the cooks who cook the best bring down all the rest leaving the best of the best of the best. I'm sure this isn't always true, but you get what I mean.

However, this rendition would seem to prove the theory. It's the best Bun rieu I have ever tried. I think you've really gotta throw in the purple monster (the Mam tom I mentioned yesterday) in the pot on the table above and half a teaspoon of that freshly minced red chili for a heat heavy hit. Squeeze in a lemon, chuck in a bit of hedgerow and off you go. At 4,000VD, it's cheaper than the last one I tried in District 1. The tofu chunks are slightly smaller and so are the synthetic looking slabs of congealed blood, and that's no bad thing. At least it's all bite size. The broth leaps with tomato sweet tangy vapours. I supped this fella to the bottom of the bowl and it's not every day I do that. I'll be back for more from this stall.

Scoffin' street broth

To pigeon hole Bun Rieu as a mere soup does this broth behemoth a disservice. Some might see it as a stew coming over all soup-like, but… ahhh… it’s a difficult one to nail down and the variations are… hmmm…. varied. Some come with crabmeat, some not, some with fishy balls, crab balls, whole shrimps, no tofu, with tofu… la la la. I am not sure there is a ‘definitive’ Bun rieu and in such circumstances, experimentation is the key to finding one that takes your fancy. The street stall I stopped off at, opposite 147 Le Thanh Ton Street, serves up this poor man’s noodle soup and nothing else (Yum - Pieman likes the one dish wonders that don’t know what a menu is) Secondly, although this is my first visit, I’ve seen this ‘one-chef-show’ packing out the pavement from 6pm onwards on a daily basis. Pieman’s rigorous quality control system successfully negotiated – now let's eat.

The thing with Bun Rieu is that there’s not an awful lot that doesn’t get lumped in for the ride. There’s sliced tomatoes, fried tofu, hunks of pounded crab meat, conjealed blood, ‘spam sticks’, fresh rice noodles, small dried shrimp, chilies, spring onions, garlic, chili paste, mam tom (shrimp paste)… and then you add your beansprouts, herbage, lettuce and what have you... See what I mean? there’s something for all the family in there, but can you really call that little lot a soup? Well, can you?

That innocent looking spoon full of purple paste (Mam tom shrimp paste) above is not to everyone’s taste. It has without doubt THE worst smell in the cooking world. A kind of month old stilton with hint of dead Cod… or something. If you choose to include a dollop, as I always do, best hold your nose and get it in there quick. Amazingly, the smell disappears and doesn't permeate the dish, but marries with the chili paste and fresh chilies increasing the whole spice packed sweat-down experience that is a bowl of Bun rieu. I’m partial to the taste of blood (huyet) and I have come to like those ‘spamsticks’ (that's the fella poking out at the back of the bowl above) which, I think, are made of ground pork and shrimp, but I could be very wrong on that. There's that humungous chunk of pounded crabmeat (on the left) and the tofu. Bun rieu tofu is always fried, giving a firm, slightly crispy exterior and a soft interior. One word of warning - beware of tofu splash-backs – the soft interior is like a sponge and can fill with broth only to explode over your shirt when you pierce the fried exterior. Not cool.

I would have to say this stall serves up a superb, nutritious, pore-breachin’ broth and is well worth checking out. Unfortunately, the chef did break one of Pieman’s review rules, ‘Don’t try and diddle the dim foreigner.’ Pieman paying up policy in situations like this is gently remind them you know the real price, pay up, but never return, no matter how good the food is. This dish should cost between 3 – 6,000VD. Rest assured, I’ll be blogging up a whole lot more Bun rieu before I’m done.