Saturday Lunch at the Grumpy Pig

17 May 2013

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The last time we went to Grumpy Pig (on a Sunday), there was only the brunch menu. This time, we had the regular menu.  All to ourselves.

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So we ordered the things that we missed very, very much.  Green papaya salad with orange and watermelon, pulled pork summer rolls, and Shanghainese spring rolls.

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I’d been hooked on the summer rolls (stuffed with pork, mushrooms, and cabbage) since last autumn, when I powered through six (by myself) while waiting for Myra and her parents.  When I need to pass the time, there are often food items involved.  Sometimes six of them, even.

After our warm-up, we ordered the barbeque ribs and, my favorite, the pork dumplings.  By we, I mostly mean yours truly.

DSC_0011 DSC_0012 DSC_0015The ribs were interesting – beer-braised, with a cumin-heavy dry rub, then “ghetto-smoked” in some contraction the Grumpy Pig kitchen figured out.  Not bad, actually – the best barbecue ribs I’ve had in Shanghai, for sure.  I could’ve used a more liberal dose of BBQ sauce.

And my favorite pork dumplings were as delicious as ever, overflowing with juicy chunks of pork.  Essentially the opposite to the thin-skinned soup dumplings so popular in Shanghai.  A much-needed boost of pork.

And that’s basically what I look for in life.  Pork.  In its various, amazing, God-given forms.

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L’Usine – Saigon

28 April 2013

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Another recommendation courtesy of our Shanghai friend Winston, L’Usine is a hip shop and restaurant/coffeeshop in District 1, tucked away in the second-floor of an otherwise unmemorable collection of galleries, boutiques, and scooter parking.  Up a narrow turn of stairs is L’Usine’s corridor, its tiling, color scheme, and signage very reminiscent of a nostalgic French bistro.

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Cu Chi Tunnels

28 April 2013

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You may notice that I don’t have much in the way of the actual tunnels.  One way of looking at it is that it is difficult to take photos while crawling on your hands and knees through a claustrophobically small space that simultaneously feels like an oven.  Another, more enlightened viewpoint is that the other things we saw on our hour-long walking tour were more interesting.  The bombs, for example.  And especially the booby traps.

Needless to say, war is such a crazy, crazy thing, twisting humanity like a wet rag, wringing out all forms of odd and cruel genius.

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Phở Hòa Pasteur – Saigon

28 April 2013

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After a morning of hot & muggy tourism at the Cu Chi Tunnels, we stumbled back to our hotel in dire need of sustenance.  And since we hadn’t yet had any, nothing else sounded quite as sustaining as a bowl of phở (even if it was more than a little warm outside).  The concierge smilingly pointed us towards Phở Hòa Pasteur, and off we went in a taxi.

Even at three in the afternoon, there were a handful of diners slurping away at their bowls when we arrived in front of the restaurant’s humble doorstep.  We sat down and admired the simple interiors, a worker slicing away at a tabletop of chili peppers, several lazy flies buzzing about, the array of herbs and seasoning at our elbows.

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Saigon Street Eats – XO Foodie Tour

28 April 2013

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XO Tours‘ foodie tour came highly recommended from Winston, a friend in Shanghai who’d eaten his way through Saigon last year.  We were disappointed at first – the tour was fully booked all three days that Myra and I were in town.  However, two spots opened up last minute and we eagerly jumped on board.  Around 5:30 in the afternoon, two cheerful ladies picked up us on scooters and after a brief introduction, we zoomed off to our first stop, a beef noodle soup place on the side of the street (I’m not sure where).

Riding in the back of a scooter was a fun first.  Just so you know, I have strong thighs, and I’ve been working on my core, so I definitely didn’t have to hold onto the bike with my hands (most of the time).  Also, my tour guide warned me not to hold onto her, which I guess would’ve been a little creepy for her.  But mostly, it was core strength.  Like a true professional (Vietnamese guy).

Ben, the group tour guide, met us at the noodle soup stall, and explained a bit about bun bo hue: bun is the round spaghetti-esque rice noodle (as opposed to the flat-shaped pho) and bo is beef (the soup as well as slices of cooked brisket), with a vinegary savoriness.  The hot bowl served to kickstart our appetites as well as line our stomachs.

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Cục Gạch Quán – Saigon Fresh

11 April 2013

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For our first dinner in Saigon (on our first full day in Vietnam), we walked from our hotel in District 3 towards Tan Dinh market, past which was our destination, Cục Gạch Quán, located on an understated backstreet of sorts, a nondescript sign for a restaurant that had come highly recommended from our friend Mel.

Because they didn’t have a table on the first floor, we climbed a steep wooden staircase (I don’t know why they built it over a floor-level aquarium, but whatever) to the second floor.

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Streets of Saigon – Day & Night

11 April 2013

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This was my first trip to Vietnam, a country that I had heard a bit about in recent years, first from a friend who spent her Fulbright there and second from a couple in Shanghai who’d visited Saigon last year and had a glorious culinary time.  I had also read young adult fiction like Walter Dean Myer’s Fallen Angels (anybody remember that one?) and watched Forrest Gump and Born on the Fourth of July, so I knew basically everything there was to know about Vietnam.

In Saigon, I expected a vibrant city, the hum of a country coming into its own, young, ambitious.  I expected motorbikes and condensed milk coffee carts and markets and the faint echo of its colonial past and the fading scars of war.

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A palatial school near the Reunification Palace.

Street view of Notre Dame.

Street view of Notre Dame in District 1.

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Yet Another Pun – Pho-Tastic on Wuding Lu, Shanghai

23 March 2013

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Myra and I have been frequenting the new Vietnamese place down the street from our apartment.  It must be a prerequisite of all Vietnamese places, namely pho shops, that the name of the restaurant be a lousy pun.  Before they can begin to think about the menu and location and all the other silly little details, any Vietnamese restaurant owner must first find a reasonably punny title for their upcoming pho project.  Sorry, any self-respecting pho shop owner, that is.

Frankly, I just want a good reliable Vietnamese restaurant without having to feel like an idiot when referring it to friends or typing the name out on any device with a screen.

So I resolve to type it out once and then not to refer to the place by name in the rest of the post: Pho-Tastic, on 1097 Wuding Lu across from Laowang and down the street from Enoterra, Le Cafe des Stagiaires, Lab, etc.  Right next to the gas station.

We ventured upstairs once but the staircase is a dauntingly steep and not worth the fuss if there are seats downstairs.  As for the food, I suppose I’ll have a much better point of comparison in about two weeks when Myra and I head to Ho Chi Minh City, but I found the beef pho and the pork chop (the other thing I usually order, with either rice or bun noodles) to be pretty reliably tasty.  The soup isn’t complex or unique, but a squeeze of lime and some peppers help you deal with it.  The noodles are consistent, slightly salty, and the beef balls are potently savory in that fried garlic sort of way.

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So Much Madison – Sunday Brunch

23 March 2013

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I’d heard a lot about Madison’s infamous brunch over the past year, so it was exciting to get a shot at it.  The only setback was that we couldn’t get a table (for eleven people) until two-thirty in the afternoon.  Which then meant that many items (food & drinks) were sold out, including orange juice (oddly, for a brunch establishment).  Noted, I suppose, to come (much) earlier.

Either way, the country-fried wagyu steak (with chorizo gravy) and the chicken waffle sandwich were still available, so I ordered them:

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