Well... Here I am in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon)! A fast paced city! A surprisingly clean city (at least here in the centre), I should say! Another example of Asia moving ahead at 1000 miles per hour! The traffic, chaotic! Crossing the road is an adventure by itself: don't expect anyone to stop when you are crossing... just cross at a steady speed and they will pass around you... Do not hesitate! But anyway, this post is about noodle soups... I guess that my first impressions of Vietnam will be solidified in the next days, so I will leave that for a future post. So here we go:
Obviously, my time in Ho Chi Minh had to gravitate around noodle soups! I had to try the famous soups at the world famous Lunch Lady! It was beyond any expectations! She has a small, hard to find food stall under the shade of a beautiful tree (it is really hot here... above 35C, any shade is welcome) and she serves every day of the week a different soup. Thursday is Bun Mam day, a fermented fish soup with pieces of roasted pork belly, prawns and vegetables. Delicious and pungent with a kick of spiciness that made me quickly drink a whole Saigon beer.
Lunch Lady in Ho Chi Minh
Then today I did what a good Vietnamese would do and went for a Pho in the morning! The best way to move around here is paying some guy to take you on his motorbike, so after a ride to the Pasteur Institute I went straight to the also famous Pho Hoa. Another place full of locals eating there. As some of my friends know, I LOVE pho, and again, my expectations were not deceived! Fantastic broth, good quality meat and lots of fresh garnishes! It is a totally different level of pho-ness! Oh, and the noodles were fantastic! Thinner than usually I'm used to, which made the whole experience of eating the pho much easier than usual. Some interesting habits that I noticed around: Vietnamese don't eat the whole broth, they leave loads of it in the bowl and they use a smaller bowl to dip the meat in sauces before putting it in the mouth... Interesting...
Food in Asia (at least Southeast Asia) has some specific flavours that one can always find here, but not in the West, not even in the best Asian restaurants. It is not necessarily better per se, it is different... sometimes even weird for our western palate. One thing is for sure, those flavours are enough to put me in travel mode, and that makes this food better than its equivalent in the West.
Now I'm definitely in Asia!
