Eating Saigon

Beware: extreme food porn to follow.

My only real contact with true Vietnamese culture has been through food. In the late 1980s, as a young graduate architect in Orange County, California, I had befriended several Vietnamese émigrés who steered me through the culinary mysteries of restaurants of ‘Little Saigon’, a loosely defined community in Westminster and Garden Grove. Lots of soups, wonderful crunchy deep fried stuff using rice in a myriad of forms: straight up, noodles, broken, flour. Fresh and pungent herbs.

And that ubiquitous and iconic Vietnamese condiment, nước mắm, fish sauce. Mixed with lime and/or sugar, chilies, herbs it is a classic example of umami and you want to put it on everything, Whatever you order here in Saigon, a bowl of fish sauce accompanies. To simply call it a condiment like ketchup is insufficient; it is a catalyst to the amazing flavors of this cuisine.

My brief visit to Saigon on the simple task of finding great examples of just two classic staples of Vietnamese cuisine, pho and banh mi. These are actually relatively new dishes in the history of this ancient culture, but are wildly popular here and abroad.

Pho

I hope this whole internet thing catches on. Prior to arriving here, I did some research online to find where to get the best pho, mainly in Saigon District 1, preferably a short taxi ride away. Apparently defining who makes the best pho is like deciding what kind of Protestant you want to be- at the core its basically the same, just what kind of frills do you want.

I decided on Pho Hoa at the very north end of Louis Pasteur Boulevard. In the south, they usually eat pho in the morning, so I left the hotel after a somewhat staid continental breakfast, visited a dark, incense-fogged Taoist temple full of oversized scary god/men statues and walked the mile over to Pho Hoa. The sidewalk full of parked motorbikes was a good sign, and waiting for a table at ten in the morning on a Saturday also boded well. Simple and clean with stools and folding tables, this place is not about atmosphere. A stainless steel-surfaced box right off the sidewalk housed the small kitchen like a precious jewel and indeed this was the simple hearth from which the one product of this place sprung, soup.

Fortunately for us tourists, there is a picture menu of the varieties of pho. I point and grunt. In three minutes, a huge bowl of steaming rice noodles and beef in broth was plopped in front of me. Fine chopped green onions covered the surface like the North Pacific trash gyre. The customary bowls of bean sprouts, lime segments and fresh chilies were dropped as well. An enormous pile of fresh herbs as well, including my favorite, holy basil, with its slight anise flavor. Piling all that in, along with Hoisin and chili sauce, my bowl was filled to the top.

For me, soup is all about the broth. Screw that up and the dish fails. The broth of pho is a very long, slow process, working every bit of flavor from beef bones, beef pieces and oxtails. Roasted onions and roasted spices like ginger, cinnamon, star anise and cardamom part their wonderful tastes. The result is a perfumed rich liquid that stimulates the olfactories as much as the taste senses. I could taste the experience of the cook, focused as she was on basically doing one thing. And doing it well.

Eating pho is never elegant, involving much slurping. But doing as the locals, I hunched over and devoured.

Banh Mi

The classic Saigon sandwich can be found everywhere in the City. By triangulating a couple of local foodie blogs and TripAdvisor, I found the very close Bánh Mì Huỳnh Hoa. The store is so small it is basically just like a food cart with a fixed address. Cars and motorbikes stop and park illegally right in front to grab a sandwich. This is the closest to drive-thru fast food in the heart of Saigon yow will find, but serving something far beyond Mickey D’s.

Just as pho depends on a good broth, Banh mi relies, as do all sandwiches in my mind, on the quality of the bread. French colonialism taught the Vietnamese how to make exquisite breads and pastries, often- quelle horreur!- better than France herself. The baguette used by Bánh Mì Huỳnh Hoa differs subtlely from the French original. The crust is crunchy but thinner, prone to cracking under gentle pressure, like the vitreous sugar veneer of a crème brulee. The light fluffy mie inside has just enough body to support the sandwich innards, but with no real substance otherwise.

A rich paté was generously slathered along the bottom half. BBQ pork, a pork cold cut and dried shredded pork followed. Then pickled carrots and daikon radish, green onions, fresh herbs, a squirt of something like fish sauce or soy, some little but effing hot chili fragments. In one movement he wraps it in paper, bags it and ties a rubber band around it. He gives it to me as I handed over the 30,000 dong to him. Yeah. A dollar eighty for this sandwich I travelled 20 hours to enjoy.

A mouthful of this sandwich simply has everything going. Sweet, salty, bitter, spicy, herbaceous, crunchy, smooth, umami. Heaven.

  

I also had Bánh xèo, a fried rice flour pancake 

stuffed with shrimp and pork.