Street Eats

I'm not the first person to 'discover' the joys and pitfalls of street food in Vietnam, and no wonder. It's head and shoulders above what you'd find in any other country I've been to, and it's everywhere.

The Vietnamese concept of a 'restaurant' is a great deal more complex than in the West, where you basically have street stalls, sit-down restaurants with menus, and not a great deal in between. In Vietnam there is a huge gray area in between those two. I have tried to pin down some of the gradations:

1. Proper street stalls, usually selling sandwiches (banh mi), small fried doughnuts with sesame seeds, or fruit.

2. One-pot establishments with only one thing to order, usually a soup or rice dish - actually, usually pho.

3. Same as above, but with several dishes behind glass to choose from.

At this point, the eatery in question probably still doesn't have its own piece of real estate. Instead it will have three or four plastic tables with small plastic stools. On those tables (depending on the dish) will be anything up to and including: a toilet-paper dispenser in lieu of napkins, a small bowl of chili oil/chili sauce/fresh chilis, fresh herbs like basil and coriander, bean sprouts, nuoc nam (Vietnamese fish sauce), soy sauce, lime wedges, and salt, as well as chopsticks, forks, and spoons (but never knives).

The picture above is a good example of 2. It was where I usually got breakfast and it served delicious grilled pork com tam, or pork ribs over rice (20,000 VND).

4. Now the restaurants has its own address and maybe even a menu, though usually written on the wall rather than on paper. The decor is still minimalist, by which I mean cheap.

5. Now all the cooking takes place out of sight and there is a printed menu, though the english translation (if there is one) may take sme effort to figure out.

6. Western-style restaurants with waiters and menus (usually in Vietnamese and English - the menus, not the waiters).

Some words of caution: for what I assume are reasons of economy, Vietnamese dishes often leave the bones in, including in soups and stir-fries, which can be a hassle. They will also laugh at you if you can't use chopsticks right.

One last thing: the Vietnamese concept of how much food makes a filling meal is very different from the US, which is not surprising. I was hungry the entire first week here, and others simply ordered two servings of everything. As a result I lost five pounds - the Vietnamese Diet.