noodlepie

Saigon Cao Lau

This is Cao Lau. A pork noodle dish, native of Hoi An town in Central Vietnam. I've blogged this dish before. The rendition above is the Saigon take. I find this at the "What? You want a table for six? You'll be bloody lucky" - Quan An Ngon Restaurant at 138 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia street in District 1. It's the first time I've seen this dish sold anywhere outside Hoi An. I don't know when Quan An Ngon added it to the menu. I can't remember seeing it on previous visits. Their take ain't that great. Quite bland and nowhere near as enjoyable as the one I blogged from Hoi An, see below. Looks quite a bit different too, no?

So, a request. Does anyone know of anywhere else in Vietnam, outside Hoi An, where you can score Cao lau? Good Cao lau? Here's NoStarwhere's take and The Rice Bowl's.

Eel do nicely

We've covered this gaff - Quan An Ngon - before so I won't go into the histrionics of the restaurant, but I will say it's well worth poking your nose in here if your time is limited and you want to check out a very wide selection of nosh under one roof... errr... make that a banana tree or brolly actually. In the pic above, you can see the chef with a firey hot pan of oil dishing out the Banh Tom Ho Tay - again, we covered that yonks ago, so no need to prattle on more about it here, but it is indeed a fab fried thing. For today's lunch I dipped deep into the soup menu and plumped for Mien Luon (Eel soup with translucent noodles).

The eel is chopped into small chunks and fried beforehand before landing atop the translucent mien with a few sprigs of spring onion and finely chopped spring onion for company. On the side plate you'll find Quai, Rau Ram, some sliced onions, a bowl of nasty chili sauce and a squeeze of lemon. All in all, that's all you'll need to make your Mien luon sing with flavour. Personally, I hit the lemon first, chuck in a few ripped up herbs and get stuck in.

The soup itself is clear and very lightly flavoured. A splash of the chili would move things up a gear, but Vietnamese chili sauce is rank. It's the texture of the eel and noodle combo which I find appealing, much like in a Chao Luon (Eel rice porridge), but it's not for everyone. In fact some find the whole internal experience downright creepy. Not pieman - yum, yum. Gimme more eel dishes please. 18,000VD a bowl or just over a dollar. It's cheaper elsewhere, but this is the only southern rendition I've ingested so far.

Street-free streetfood stunna

Quan An Ngon at 138 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia Street in District 1 brings streetstalls in off the streets, dresses them up fancy, doubles the street price and hauls in punters by the hundredweight. The result is an illustration of the overwhelming appeal of street nosh. This place has around 400 seats and you'll be lucky to find one free at lunchtime or dinner. The owner, purportedly a savvy Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese), had a superb idea - Scour the streets, find the best dishes out there, the best street chefs cooking those dishes, offer them a gig at a new restaurant and a regular, reliable wage. Bingo, Quan An Ngon was born in 2001. The owner recruited 20 or more cooks this way and each serves their own speciality inside Quan An Ngon.

I have a feeling the real draw is the fact that diners can peruse the stalls that line the perimeter of this indoor/outdoor restaurant - which is a bit of a courtyard-come-temple if you know what I mean - and get a sanitized sense of street eats without having to actually step foot in the gutter themselves - God forbid. I am a big fan, it must be said. I've never had anything I would call total crap here, but there are some dishes that are noticeably better than others. And I had two pipin' hot hits on this visit.

First up is Chao luon (Rice porridge with eel) costs 17,000VD. Chao comes in several varieties, (Ga) chicken, (Muc) squid, (Vit) duck, (Tom) shrimp, (Ca) fish and (Long) offal. Chao luon is probably not the first choice of many in 31 degrees of sticky Saigon pre-rainy season heat, in an outdoor restaurant, with a limited number of fans, sitting under parasols and banana trees... but... I have a heavy Chao Luon habit to feed and, to my mind, this joint serves up porridge perfection.

There are two types of Chao Luon. One is the freshly exterminated eel cooked in with the porridge variety - this one can be a touch fiddly in the bone department. The other is the luon chien (fried) variety - the eel is deep-fried in a very light batter and thrown into the hot porridge just before serving. That's the way I prefer it and that's the way Quan An Ngon dish it up. It's the porridge that takes the time, 3 to 8 hours simmering or until the rice is mushy and it... err... looks like porridge. Season, throw in the eels, splash of deep fried shallots, herbage, a side of quai (fried bread stick), half a lemon, chili sauce and you're ready. It's the slightly crispy texture of the fried eels combined with the smooth warmth of the porridge and a biting combo of pepper and chili that keeps me craving more. It's simply yum.

Next up is a northern dish Banh Tom Ho Tay (Fried shrimp cakes) costs 14,000VD. Ho Tay is West Lake in Hanoi (that's the big lake to the north end of Hanoi) and there's one restaurant on Ho Tay called, imaginatively enough, Banh Tom Ho Tay and it's supposedly THE restaurant for this dish. I've been there several times, it's a tatty spot serving naff food. Quan An Ngon does the dish better. Plus, there are no rats, no crappy chairs, no knackered tables, no hordes of roaring drunks or floors littered with dinner debris. Quan An Ngon is civilised.

The shrimps are deep-fried in a light batter with slices of sweet potato served on a bed of lettuce and herbs with a nuoc mam (fish sauce) dip with sliced carrots, chilis and su su. It's crunchtatsic fun, I am a repeat offender - doesn't matter what I order at Quan An Ngon, I always seem to have room to squeeze in some Banh Tom at the end. Naughty.