Thoughts after Eating Vietnamese

Posted on June 25, 2002 in Eating

Thoughts after Eating Vietnamese

Don’t touch the sauce they serve with the eggrolls. It looks innocuous, like a small cup of broth with a few slivers of carrots and jicama floating on it. Clear right to the bottom of the bowl. They bring it out as an afterthought, like how could they forget to serve you this treasure of treasures. The bowl appears at your elbow. You dip your eggroll or a chunk of the pork meatloaf they make that has a pale, lemony body and a tangerine crust into the soup, bring the dainty to your mouth, and you’re looking for the Pekinese they’ve forcefeed in the back to keep the customers supplied with the stuff. Your snack, once a wonder of fresh vegetables, chopped meat, and a crisp rice pastry tastes like dog shit.

I advise you to try the soft spring rolls instead. They come with shrimp, some dark greens, green onions, and clear rice noodles wrapped in a sheer skin. I’ve also had them down in Little Saigon where they make them with carmine sausages that glow in the dark and turn the unprepared digestive tract into a nuclear wasteland. These are good if you have trained yourself on a rigorous diet of serranos and habeneros. It’s the Vietnamese version of chorizo: a little napalm gives it an extra kick. This is good stuff. But average Americans will probably want to stick with the shrimp. A soft spring roll is like a salad in an unobtrusive bun. You can trust this sauce not to make your meal unpalatable — unless you happen to be one of those who has a strong revulsion for anything that tastes remotely like cough syrup. This sauce is brown, almost burgundy, and opaque. They serve it with shattered peanuts floating on top of it. You take your spring roll and try to catch some of the nuts on the end. Take small bites so you can prolong your enjoyment. You might even try the leftover sauce from your spring rolls on your pork meatloaf in lieu of the Pekinese pee. Remember: brown and as transparent as ketchup is good, clear bad.

I love Vietnamese food with the preceding exception. Pho is made with a generous helping of rice noodles that have the consistency of angel hair pasta, bits of fried pork rind, fresh onions, a few greens, an excellent clear broth (the rule is for dips, not soups), and some kind of meat: chicken, pork, shrimp, or all three. Meat’s another spice. “Flavoring” as one fellow I know kept repeating one night at a committee gathering I had to attend once in San Diego. You get it in pieces cut to the size of the vegetables and other spices. The vegetables are crisp, the noodles chew easily, and the broth cures any malady except genetic ones like Huntington’s chore, Parkinson’s disease, and cystic fibrosis. It probably wouldn’t hurt these people, either, and it certainly would make whatever time they spent eating it a welcome respite from thinking about their sufferings.

I have worked out a system for eating it. I arrange some of the noodles in one of those pretty faux porcelain spoons they keep at the tables and slip the business into my mouth. I deal with the vegetables and the meat by snatching them out using the plastic chopsticks. The broth gets slurped up with the spoon. I saw an Asian gentleman doing it once back on Castro Street in Mountain View. It’s gauche, but it works.

Pho is trustworthy. They don’t let the Pekinese anywhere near the soup pots. Just remember the rule for dips: thick brown good, clear bad, very very bad.