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.

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.

The 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.

Inside, the space opens up, complementing the murmur and voices and laughter from the late morning flock of coffee-drinkers, brunch-gatherers, and the welcoming expat vibe.  Behind the restaurant sits the retail portion of the space, sporting aged wood and industrial chic, tinged with elements of curious and quirky, like stuffed elephants and billowing ceiling drapery:

We stayed for lunch, ordering L’Usine’s take on banh mi and also a pulled pork sandwich with fried egg.  I got a Vietnamese iced coffee, and we finished with a s’mores cupcake.

Our sandwiches were tasty and well-made, as were the drinks and cupcake, but I think I was a little disappointed by the sense of sterility in the menu, the lack of effort to utilize the most powerful and unique flavors of Vietnamese cuisine.  The space, however, was very inviting and robust, effortlessly mixing the earphone-and-laptop crowd with the boisterous batches of daytime drinkers that began to trickle in as we were wrapping up brunch, as well as the touristy two or three like us.  We passed on L’Usine’s collections of tees, dresses, shirts, and shoes, but they did have a sleek collection of clothes, as well as accessories (e.g., bowties, bags) with clean designs and a basic variety of colors, very Muji-esque in their economical aethestic.  Very cool spot unexpectedly in the heart of Saigon.

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.

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.

Starving from our morning tunneling (that’s not a euphemism for anything), Myra and I each order a bowl of pho, along with fresh coconut juice, spring rolls, and a steamed pork bun.  I chose pho with brisket and crispy something-or-other (pork?  I can’t remember), while Myra had brisket and beef balls.  The freshness of everything was immediately apparent, and only reinforced by the lady quietly dicing the chilis I was putting into my soup.  But beyond that, the broth had such depth (for something that looked so clear and light), made more interesting by the hints of basil and lime juice I then added.  The noodles were tasty, a bit springy and a bit salty, in balance with the complexities of the soup and toppings.

The pork bun was quite tasty, too, though I suspect that it gave my stomach some issues later on.  To find small hard-boiled quail eggs tucked into the chunky pork filling was a neat surprise, a textural contrast to the ground pork & vegetable combinations I am accustomed to seeing in China.

I couldn’t help but snap a photo of the vats of soup simmering in a room off to the side of the kitchen.  It’s essentially what I’d like to turn one of our extra bedrooms into:

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.

There’s a whole lot that I enjoyed about the food experiences in Vietnam, but one of the more fulfilling details was how simultaneously fresh and copious the garnishing dishes were: the bean sprouts, the basil & mint leaves, the chopped peppers, etc.  It was such a departure from the careful, miserly arrangements that we’d seen in China and sometimes even in the States, as if a little celebration of the bountiful land.

Next, we headed to an outdoor barbeque joint, where we gorged on smoky bits of goat breast, okra, shrimp, squid, and frog.  I sampled a bit of sugary Spark energy drink (it was a recurring theme that my personal guide, while incredibly hospitable, kept urging me to try suspect things over the course of the night), as well as monkey wine (banana wine).

The flavors were rich, reflective of the quality of the meats and seafood – the shrimp in particular, succulent and sweet.  The squid was also tasty, with a deep char I associated more with octopus but which worked quite well since the squid itself was flavorful enough not to be overpowered.  On the way out, we passed by some riverside gas stations, which rent space and lawn chairs on the dark banks to young couples in search of, ahem, personal time away from the bustle of the city and their cramped homes where the three or four generations squeezed into an apartment do not afford such privacy.

Then we spent some more time on the road, shuffling between other districts of Saigon. Chinatown, with its mecca of a wholesale market and a bustling Cantonese population. District 7, with its shiny new apartments and Western outlets.  The whir and phantoms of fluorescent carts and small hunchback vans and families playing badminton in the parks and street corners rushing past us.  There isn’t a distinctive line or border demarcating the districts, but there were moments in which I felt the scenery shift, especially as night settled in.

Our last stop was another street-side eatery, somewhat indistinguishable from the other places along the block.  We were treated to more seafood and meat: grilled quail, a Vietnamese version of chili crab, scallops topped with pork-fat-fried scallions & peanuts, clams in a sweet citrus-y soup, all washed down with cold soy milk.

The scallops were a surprising and phenomenal discovery of flavor and texture profiles – the slightly briny scallop, the oily-crunchy umami of peanuts and scallions, and the tang of the spoonful of chili fish sauce that our guides added to each bite.  The crab legs were amazing as well, flaky and sweet, perfectly paired with the sweat-inducing fire of the chili seasoning.  We finished with a pair of desserts, a coconut jelly and a creme caramel of sorts:

The other thing that made this last portion of the tour memorable was the balut, which is a duck egg that has been fertilized and let develop just enough to have a defined baby bird inside the shell.  I’m not going to go much into how it all transpired and the details of each bite, but to warn you, the next two pictures can be a bit stomach-turning.  So before they come up, I couldn’t say enough good things about the whole tour experience, which not only allowed us to see and access parts of Saigon from an otherwise unreachable perspective (scooter-bound), but also humanized it in a sense, by keeping us rooted in delicious but common-place food experiences, something shared with city-dwellers without feeling intrusive.  Our guides were incredibly friendly and hospitable, both at the table and on the road.  The tour was for both Myra and me the highlight of our Saigon stay.

And now the balut:

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.

Our server, a young Vietnamese man with a huge Bieber-esque mop of hair, brought us some leather-bound menus.  Mel had also suggested that we let the staff pick for us, and that was exactly what we did.  It didn’t help my hunger or adrenaline level that on the walk over, I’d nearly been robbed of my camera by some dudes on motorbike (luckily I had held on tightly enough), so we were ready to eat.  Young Bieber not only suggested specific dishes, but helped us match and proportion out our meal as well.  We got some drinks to help cope with the muggy night air, admiring the wall decor as we waited for our food:

The food arrived surprisingly quickly – stir-fried pumpkin flowers, deep-fried homemade tofu with lemongrass salt seasoning, stir-fried beef, and claypot-braised fish in caramel sauce:

Put simply, the flavors were incredible, each straightforward in their own way but intense, deriving from the freshness of the ingredients and from long-lived recipes.  I’d had squash blossoms before, which were also on the menu at CGQ, but wanted to try pumpkin flowers, which were like a slightly sweet version of celery (obviously without that distinct celery taste).  Both the beef and the fish were both deliciously tender, with hints of spiciness; we had rice to balance out the saltiness of the fish, something for which Young Bieber had prepared us.  The tofu was my favorite, not only for the textural combination of deep-fried crunch and fresh-made silkiness, but also because the seasoning was so good that I ended up just eating a lot of white rice with spoonfuls of the lemongrass salt.  I was tasting (and pleasantly surprised by) most of these flavor profiles and ingredient used in ways that were all new to me.  Plus, it was nice to have a server who was good at his job.

For dessert, we devoured some homemade yogurt (just slightly sweet and tangy) and banana fritters (again, slightly sweet).  After such flavor-heavy main courses, the relative lightness was quite welcome.

Cục Gạch Quán
10 Dang Tat, Tân Định, Quận 1
Ho Chi Minh City, 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.

A palatial school near the Reunification Palace.

Street view of Notre Dame in District 1.

Greenery: Công viên 30-4

Saigon Central Post Office

And vibrant it was.  Some of these I took from the passenger end of a scooter, part of an awesome street food tour that Myra and I did our second night in Saigon.  Others were from our ambling around Districts 1 and 3.  Even though there were some dirtier, crumbling corners of the city, intersections threaded with birdnests of wire, Saigon rarely came across as derelict or dirty (compared to Ulan Bator, or frankly, parts of New York City).  It felt more like a city figuring itself out, trying on new clothes, stretching out the seams of its current accoutrements.

Most signs of the city’s storied past were more evident in the daytime, and most signs of its energetic potential came alive in the night.  Part of that was self-selected because of our itinerary, but one of our guides explained that the city’s youth, for a lack of space at home where several generations might live together in cramped quarters, venture out on their scooters to find freedom in Saigon’s evening streets.  But more simply, in a completely immediate and visceral way, zooming through the nighttime version of Saigon on scooter is a thrilling view of uncorked smells, fluttering lights and tongues, bared bellies and other unexplained oddities one moment so present and in another brief instant gone.

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.

During lunch, the set menu comes with a few fried spring rolls and pickles, and the pork chop rice set comes with a small bowl of the pho soup base.  At first, it also included the banana pudding (which is delicious), but since it became an extra, I stopped ordering it, if only because after the rolls and the pho, I was pretty full.  Most of the time, the pork chop is tender, with a light coat of sauce (I’ll forgive them the one or two times they’ve overcooked it).  Add a little fish sauce to the rice, if you aren’t against fish sauce.

We’ve been frequenting the place during the course of its seemingly unending soft-opening period, and despite the occasion game of tag that their wait staff will play behind the bar, the service is prompt and conveniently out-of-sight, much appreciated in the restaurant’s small quarters.  Dinner is slightly pricier, since the set menu is not available then, but we usually get the same thing anyway.  It never blows me away, but it’s become a go-to spot for something quick, easy, reliable, and still soothing.

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

The wagyu beef was an interesting “refinement” to the classic dish, and it was nice to have quality meat underneath the breading.  Wagyu beef is an oversold concept, at least in China, but whatever the case, despite the chorizo gravy and seasoning in the crust and the deep-frying (all of which I signed up for), the beef still came through.  The chicken waffle sandwich was somewhat disappointing, although the chicken and the waffles (separately) were quite tasty.  I guess I’d been conditioned to that particular combination having a lot of (1) butter, (2) hot sauce, and (3) syrup, so I was hoping for crispier and sweeter.

In Madison’s defense, I didn’t exactly go for what I thought might’ve been the best dishes on the menu (as in, I skipped over the eggs and the french toast).  And I ordered two of the heaviest things.  But in my defense, I’m a fat kid at heart (and a little around the midsection) so, you know, I DO WHUT I WANT.

I also had a bite of a few other dishes (that other people ordered): the pancake soufflé (which, really, was just cornbread in a cast-iron skillet), banana french toast (picture courtesy of my friend Fanny), and (not pictured) homemade sausage & potato pancake french fries, which was our friend Dan’s individual order that we mistook for the duck fat fries (which we also ordered, for the table) and therefore of which we subsequently ate half.  As much as I appreciated the effort, the Southern revival portion of the Madison brunch menu was just a bit underwhelming.  The french toast, however, was delicious.  The few bites I had made me wish I’d gone more traditional in my ordering.  Apparently the poached eggs were quite tasty as well.

Alas, there’s always next time.  And hopefully some of the more soul food-driven dishes will be updated or improved by then, or else I guess I’ll have to have some that phenomenal french toast.  Tough life.