A Vietnamese fast food place just opened up down the road from me. So now if I want a fast food fix I can grab a quick bowl of pho or a quick rice plate, instead of an unhealthy burger or pizza. MUCH healthier than the American fast food. Yay!
I think that's probably the only good thing that ever came out of the Vietnam War -- Vietnamese restaurants. Unfortunately, our current racist government wants to keep little brown gooks out for fear they might be terriers terrists terrorists and won't let Iraqis in even if they've helped U.S. forces and now want a green card so they can become a Marine... so it seems unlikely that we'll get a big surge of Iraqi cuisine once the clusterfuck in Iraq-nam is finished. Bummer.
-- Badtux the Culinary Penguin
gad, i adore, flat fucking adore vietnamese cuisine. it's playful attitude to flavor, texture, and temperature make it one of the most sophisticated and vibrant things going. and pho. damned near the perfect soup to my thinking.
ReplyDeletea small storefront is the best place to get pho. the smallness of the place requires that they assemble everything on an order by order basis.
my favorite vietnamese restaurant is in garden grove. it is owned and run by the ex-vicepresident of RVN, nugyen kao ky. from the first visit i made there, i have always been treated, not just like a customer, but as an old comrade in arms, family. his chefs put the regional touches on the dishes that an old phu bai and hue grunt like me can always find those little nuances that remind me of time and place.
not all my memories of viet nam are disturbing. i loved a lot of the people there, and the countryside and scenery was often inspiring.
ding hao do ma.
The clusterfuck in Iraq-nam will never be finished. Oil just hit $118 per barrel, and 20% of all the proven reserves left on planet Earth reside in Iraq. We're not going anywhere, and we never were.
ReplyDeleteMuch as I loathe McCain, he's actually being the most honest of all the candidates when he says we'll be there for 100 years. Although I notice that, the closer we get to the election, the less we hear about withdrawal from either Obama or Clinton. Doubtless they've both received their briefings and/or marching orders from The Powers That Be...
The clusterfuck in Iraq will be ended voluntarily, or involuntarily, Fnord. We can pull out voluntarily, which will look like the fall of Saigon. Or we go bankrupt as a nation. In the case of the latter, once the checks start bouncing, our mercenaries in Iraq who provide logistical support to our troops quit, and fuel sales to our troops in Iraq and to our air force jets in the region quit. That result is more likely to resemble Dien Bien Phu than the fall of Saigon. So that's the choices. We voluntarily withdraw, or our troops end up getting slaughtered to the last man when they run out of fuel and bullets after the checks start bouncing (or, more likely, are written in dollars that are no longer worth anything and thus not accepted anymore, since the first thing a bankrupt nation tries to do is inflate its way out of bankruptcy by printing money). That's pretty much it.
ReplyDeleteMB, we have tons of those little Vietnamese storefronts up here, the SF Bay area has the second-largest Vietnamese community in the country after the Los Angeles area. There was already a Vietnamese restaurant in the neighborhood (a tiny little storefront), but it specializes in more elaborate dishes. The Vietnamese here have developed a kind of standardized fast food based around pho and rice plates (the latter because, well, sometimes you just don't feel like soup) and you can get it in strip malls all over the Bay area when you're not feeling like the more elaborate dishes at the more formal Vietnamese restaurants. My personal preference is Korean when I want more formal food, they're not subtle like the Vietnamese, they go nuts with the flavors, but when I want something more subtle or lighter I do like my pho. Toss in some of the bamboo sprouts and basil (or whatever that leafy stuff is), squirt in some of that red sauce, and go to town on it. But it was a three mile trip to the nearest pho place when I wanted some so I didn't eat it often. Now that it's a three BLOCK trip... heh!
- Badtux the Food Penguin
We need more Vietnamese cuisine here in Phoenix, but people are starting to wise up to the glories of Pho and other Vietnamese delights and you see little shops opening up here and there...mostly next door to the Vietnamese nail salons!
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I were in Vietnam on a cruise in January and I could go on and on about it all, especially the gorgeous scenery that land affords. The food, too. The noise and heat in Saigon. The beauty of Halong and Hoi An. Spectacular.
Mmmm, basil and jalapenos :)
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