noodlepie

Rolled and stuffed

This is banh uot thit nuong. A hybrid of two different Vietnamese noodle based dishes and it's the dac biet (special) dish at Ba Dang restaurant, 59bis Nguyen Thong street in District 3. Banh uot nong is a flat noodle Hue style dish commonly carted around the Saigon street in the morning. Bun thit nuong is a cold vermicelli noodle dish laced with finely sliced cucumber, beansprouts and topped with grilled, marinated pork. Both dishes get their zip from a chilli stuffed nuoc mam (fish sauce). The dish above is the blind date result. It takes the flat noodle and rolls the meat inside along with fresh basil leaves. The other difference is the peanut sauce. It's light, but unexciting. It's snack time stuff, not stunning stuff.

For what it's worth you'd be bettter off hitting the banh canh cua or the bun thit nuong, pictured above, at this place. Both of which are excellent. Bun thit nuong + banh uot thit nuong + iced tea = 17,000VD.

Barbecue boulevard

Saunter down pretty much any street between 10am and mid-day and you'll find someone somewhere (usually a man) sparking up a pavement grill and fidgeting the meat over the coals. Usually it's pork, sometimes it's beef, occasionally chicken. I find this smokey stall at the hectic corner hub of Nguyen Thi Minh Khai and Cach Mang Thang Tham Streets in District 3 outside Thu Thuy restaurant.

It's a weasel's whisker away from the KTC Macfixit men and I drop by, revived Mac in hand, to pick up a takeaway Bun thit nuong (Grilled marinated pork with cold vermicelli noodles).

They push this dish from the mobile stall front of the restaurant with a bright yellow stencilled idiot proof sign that says it costs 7,000VD. I'm sold.

Out front, the bosses daughter gets busy with the herbs. Inside there's a small seating area and the backdrop tells me they're Hue food specialists - Cac mon an Hue. However, these guys have a lot of bases to cover.

There are two menu boards and bags to choose from and an awful lot we haven't covered here... yet.

I wouldn't say the Bun thit nuong I took home with me was that good, it wasn't. In fact it was a cough below adequate and a sneeze above crap. However, there was plenty of it. That said, the number and variety of dishes on offer could make this an interesting stop off if you're in a scoff-sampling mood. It's also located in a reasonably central spot, easy to find.

The outdoor, stall side soup pot alone has four lipsmackin' varieties on the go. If I was in the vicinity again, I'd certainly consider dropping by for a cheap no frills fill. Friendly service too.

Thit: Take Two

I hope this ongoing tour of my local market is helping illustrate just how much nosh there is in this city. This market isn't special, it isn't big. It's just like a squillion others in town, but I'm still not done exploring it. The thing is barely 100 metres long and I'm as tall as it is wide. So, you know, it's small, it's good and there are more, a lot more just like it all over Saigon. Go explore.

This stallholder sells Bun thit nuong (Grilled pork with vermicelli noodles) for 7,000VD and her stall is about midway down the alley. This is my first time stoolside at her perch. I'm a regular at the other thit nuong seller and I must admit I felt a bit of a slag sloping off to her rival four stalls and weasel's burp up my back passage, but there are noticeable differences between the two. This seller doesn't do the kebab numbers and she doesn't do those freakin' top rice roll rockers.

She's a straight up 'n' down thit woman. Vermicelli noodles, chopped up cha gio (spring rolls), veggies and scissored, marinated, grilled pork in a bowl, mish-mash-mosh, slurp of nuoc mam (fish sauce) and whallop, you're done.

I think old reliable four hops and a beetle's scrurry to her right is better. This was a bit bland and I do like my rolls, big time and OK, I'll admit I did stop by her rival for a nibble and a gulp on the way back to Pieman Towers. Whaddya think? Those cha gio above look a bit munchtastic ehhh?

Meat market

Continuing our mini-series from the local market, today finds us masticating at the meat stall. This seller flogs Bun thit nuong (Grilled meat and cold noodles) from an L-shaped table top stall dumped outside her front door and next to the Hot toc (hairdresser). A curtain of carcass smoke choking a trail across the upper section of the market is what first drew my attention to this stall. Of all the sellers down the local market she's the friendliest. Although I'll admit, she's the one who does the nattering, I just frown confusion.

The nursery school seating helps make it a popular hang with the street's old lady mafia. A six foot tall honky isn't exactly a snug fit in these surroundings, but I try to blend in... As with probably every local stall at every local market in Vietnam, it's not just the food that's the draw, everyone's here for a gas and a gossip. The mobile Xoi seller who plies her morning trade up and down this alley is a regular squatter here. I digress... on to the food. In the two-tiered glass case above, we have 'the goods'. Top left is banana flower, next door some ready-wrapped rolls (more of which in a minute), then comes cooked, skewered pork meat kebabs and some very dainty cha gio. Sauces, condiments and debris and stored down below. Her 'kitchen' is a low level barbie she prods on her left hand side.

Above we have some fresh meat beginning their journey deep into the heart of char-town.

And these fine looking specimens are fresh outta the fire. I don't know about you, but meat has rarely looked more tempting than that flagrant display above. Now, there are a couple of options ahead of you. You can make a rice paper roll filled with meat, lettuce, cucumber, basil, bun (cold vermicelli noodles) and banana flower. Or you can go for the full Bun thit nuong-monty i.e. same as a rice paper wrap, but more of it and whacked on a plate rather than rolled up, i.e. something like this. You can also skirt the meat (Why the hell you'd wanna do that, I don't know...) and shove a cha gio in the rice paper instead and then add all the usual trimmings, wrap, dip and scoff.

On this visit I'm in snack mode and plump for a couple of meat-filled rolls and a paltry one cha gio. The dip is a nuoc mam (fish sauce) firey chili fiend. If you're no vindaloo afficiando, approach this bowl with a degree of caution. This seller seems to fob off the ready-wrapped numbers in her glass cabinet to the mang di ve (takeaway) crowd. However, pull up a pew and she'll make sure you get a pipin' fresh slab of meat in your roll which she'll also wrap up for you if, like me, your rolling technique is less than good. Her rolls are a herby, carnivorous hit, her cha gio a bit of a limp, cold miss. 8-10,000VD depending on what, and how much, you scoff.

Bun thit nuong

This is a take home Bun thit nuong (Grilled meat with cold vermicelli noodles) grabbed along Nguyen Thong Street near the junction with Ky Dong Street in District 3. It's the dac biet (special) dish of the stall which also serves an array of noodle soups. The nuoc mam (fish sauce) is well tangy and sweet and scattered with crinkle cut carrots and onion. The pieces of pork shrapnel are marinated in sweet fish sauce and grilled over embers stall front. There are also portions of 'rolled pork kebab' which are skewered before grilling. For greens you have mint, cucumber and banana flower. There's also some chopped nuts in among this lot. This is fabulous streetscoff and costs 10,000VD. Highly recommended. Sorry I don't have the exact address, but it's very near the Ky Dong junction. Come lunchtime just follow the scent of the nearest grill. NB: Over the coming couple of weeks blogging may be light. However, I have an interesting wee mini-series planned which I intend to blog as soon I have put it together.

Fair food at fair prices

After spying a recommendation from a fellow Saigon based bone chewer over at the ever useful egullet forum I made a flying visit down to the 2004 Vietnam Arts and Culture Fair, next to the Notre Dame Cathedral on Le Duan street in District 1. The fair runs into the night, every day until the 30th April. The food section is on the cathedral corner and consists of 8 stalls run by different Saigon hotels such as; Kim Do, Ai Hue, Que Huong, Continental, Thuc Don and the one I pulled a bamboo stool up at, the Arc en Ciel Thien Hong. The whole bamboo theme takes it's lead from the scoff-tacular Binh Quoi Tourist village which I reported on for Saveur Magazine in their very cool 'Saveur 100, Our favorite foods, restaurants, recipes, people, places & things' at the end of 2003. Binh Quoi serves up an all you can eat, and then some you can't, riverside 'Southern primitive foods' buffet for 75,000VD a head. More from this destination soon.

Meanwhile back on Le Duan street there's no all-in-one buffet ticket, but there's a good selection of individual dishes including grilled meats, xoi (sticky rice) and lotus root salads. I chose the Bun thit nuong (Cold noodles and grilled meat) for 10,000VD and a couple of Cha gio (Spring rolls) for 5,000VD. That's US$1 for the lot. The kitchen staff had a bit of the 'I'm nervous around foreigners and have lost the ability to speak' syndrome about them, but soon lightened up when they realised I was there to eat the food and not them.

I am a bit of a Bun thit nuong fan. A simple dish in the extreme. A bed of shrubbery; cilantro, mint, cucumber shards, chopped spring onion, shredded lettuce, beansprouts and peanuts. Cold noodles on top and slap on your meat, either beef or pork. Add a couple of chopped up spring rolls, a sprinkling of deep fried shallots, side dish of chili infused fish sauce and you're done. What made this Bun thit nuong stand out from all the others I have tried was the meat, Thit heo (pork). The squealer this meat came from had been roasted on a spit for the best part of the morning and it showed (the chap in the snap above has yet to feel the heat). Thin, tender strips of pork, succulent, juicy and big enough to wrap a bunch of noodles and salad inside and make a tasty 'pigwich'. Well, that's the way Pieman likes it. At the Vietnam Arts & Culture Fair they're shoveling the grub out in plastic bowls which is not terribly refined, but is no doubt practical and hardly obscures the taste.

I was highly tempted to carry on eating my way around this miniature foodfest, but I've got until Friday night to return for another fill. If you're around the centre of town this week and in need of sustenance there are worse (and more expensive) places to seek out. Worth a whirl.