Saigon Specialties

Good Food, a food column by Jennifer Brizzi

Saigon specialties

This column originally ran in December of 2001 in Taconic Weekend, Taconic Press, Millbrook, New York

In October my husband and I went to Vietnam for the second time to adopt our daughter Sofia, after having met her at her orphanage in August. This trip was supposed to be two to three weeks, but stretched to one day shy of four. We didn't mind spending four weeks there, but nightmarish was the uncertainty of not knowing when or even if we would be able to return home with our daughter. U.S. Immigration was withholding and threatening to deny the visas of our daughter and nine other babies, all stranded in the Evergreen Hotel in Saigon.

In the meantime, we did our best to enjoy Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon's official name these days. It's a fun city to explore, full of stunning pagodas and fascinating historic sites. It lacked the narrow old streets and lakeside charm of Hanoi, but teemed with humankind buzzing down its wide boulevards on motorbikes and plenty of lovely colonial architecture. That doesn't mean log cabins but rather French Colonial, with majestic villas of brightly colored or pastel stucco and beautiful detailing. Everything seemed clean, new and freshly painted in Saigon, unlike the slightly worn look of Hanoi, whose character we actually preferred. If we'd had to take up residence in Vietnam to await our daughter's visa, we would have gone back to Hanoi.

Saigon was hotter than Hanoi. As I write, snow is covering the ground outside my Rhinecliff window, but back in Saigon it was sultry, sweaty, shorts and T-shirt weather. October and November seemed more like summer than fall, which was just fine by us, and the food was delightful to discover. The best part was the delicious fruit, which the Mekong Delta region near Ho Chi Minh City is famous for. Nearly every day the staff at the Evergreen would leave us a different kind of fruit on a plate with a small knife: bananas, green oranges, papayas, mangos or longans (similar to lychees, with brown skins to peel).

At a simple seafood restaurant we went to, we were served fat sweet sections of pomelo (similar to grapefruit but sweeter), sprinkled with salt and cayenne, at the end of our meal. It was an unlikely but perfect dessert to a big meal, which would have been bigger, too big, if we'd received all we'd ordered. The steamed carp was the freshest and best we'd ever had.

Vietnamese fruits make delicious beverages as well. We kept a supply of refreshing boxed pineapple juice in our hotel room fridge. We enjoyed cool coconut water a couple of times from a hidden-away booth in the huge Ben Thanh Market, whose clock tower is the symbol of Saigon. We bought complex, fruity sugarcane juice from a street vendor, who served it to us in a well-used glass with ice she crushed to order.

You're not supposed to have ice while traveling in the third world because it can be unsanitary, but how can you enjoy Vietnam's wonderful iced coffee without it? We did anyway. We also partook of the fresh herbs and lettuce leaves that are used to flavor, freshen and contain tasty morsels of food. We were advised to refuse that as well, but didn't. Did we get sick? Yes, a couple of times, and although I don't advise doing as we did, I'd say it was worth it and would do it again. But that's me.

Vietnam is a long skinny, country, with Hanoi at the top and Ho Chi Minh City at the bottom, and so there are some pretty big regional differences in the cuisine. Southern food generally has much more of those fresh herbs and is spicier and sweeter than the northern dishes. As I said in my last column, the northern food is more like Chinese and that of the south is more like Thai cuisine, with aromatic curries, rich with coconut milk. Clay pot cooking is delicious, where chunks of pork or fish are simmered in a caramel gravy that just oozes succulence.

Near our hotel was a great little place, always packed, with only one item on the menu: a big bowl of chicken soup filled with savory broth, flavorful chicken meat and lots of noodles. It was so good it just might put your grandmother's chicken soup to shame. We also loved Banh Xeo, "the pancake house." No, it wasn't a Vietnamese IHOP, but a place that specialized in a huge scrumptious crepe made of rice flour, egg and coconut milk, stuffed with shrimp and chunks of pork, crunchy with bean sprouts and onion. One night we went to its new competitor across the street and had some tasty grilled wild boar to go with it.

Another place near the hotel, Huong Ruong, is famous for its unusual specialties, like snake, mouse, toad, bat, lizard, etc. Because they do have less exotic things on the menu, I agreed to go check it out, but we just never seemed to get around to scheduling it.

Because this trip involved a lot of waiting around for word from Immigration, we ate a lot of meals at our hotel. Their restaurant had a wide variety of Vietnamese and "western dishes," such as a quite nice "club sandwich," made with a chicken cutlet, ham, tomato, and something resembling mayonnaise. I loved the "calamari," thick chewy rings of cuttlefish in an airy batter with a little dish containing ketchup and Vietnamese hot-sweet chili sauce for dipping. Although the food could be on the heavy side, the variety and quality was pretty good, and we spent a lot of time in the restaurant at strategy meetings with the other parents, while the sweet waitstaff held and played with our babies.

Although the restaurant served "omelettes" for breakfast, most mornings we had congee, which for the uninitiated is a great way to start the day. It is much, much better than it sounds, a rice gruel or porridge embellished with shrimp, pork, chicken or beef. The best was the chicken, the Vietnamese version of the bird being the most flavorful I've had anywhere.

Since we didn't know just how long we'd be there, we tried to economize and stick to street kitchens, whose proprietors served forth plenty of smiles along with cheap, tasty food. But occasionally, with other parents, we would go to tourist restaurants like the Vietnam House, where gorgeous colonial décor, traditional music and waitstaff in flowing brightly-colored silk enhanced our dining.

For a while we couldn't figure out why the hotel lobby often reeked of rum, and then finally it dawned on us that it was the sweet liquor left as an offering to the ancestors in the lobby. In Vietnam the culture centers on ancestors and in each home and business has at least one beautiful altar that billows with the sweet smoke of incense and bursts with offerings of food to enhance the otherworldly lives of the ancestors: usually sticky rice, boiled chicken, rice wine and fruit. During Vietnamese New Year, you'll find custard apple, coconut, papaya and mango, whose names spell out a prayer for happiness and prosperity.

We were positively addicted to some little coconut pies from the bakery down the street, which sold a mind-boggling assortment of sweet and savory little somethings. I don't think I'll ever find a recipe for those pies, but I bet I could polish off a dozen at a sitting, they were so good.

I've always traveled with a little book that I call my Food Diary, where I write down everything I eat, and have done so on every trip since we went to France in 1992 for my cousin Bruno's wedding. But this trip was pretty stressful, and I didn't do that this time, so I can't remember a lot of the great stuff we probably had. So this column isn't as vividly studded with food memories as usual. We hope to take Sofia to Sicily this summer to introduce her to her Italian cousins, and I'll get right back to that food diary business, I promise.

Jennifer Brizzi | P.O. Box 48 | Rhinecliff, New York 12574 | U.S.A.

jenniferbrizzi@yahoo.com