Vada Pav

I'm Scottish so partial to potatoes, fried foods and anything between white bread.  I am unable to understand why the Vada Pav has not ventured into Scotland, it would become the national dish in no time at all.

As a menu might describe it; "A fluffy potato patty enrobed in crunchy batter nestling in a soft bun generously slathered with chutney". Best eaten immediately and often.

Heaven.

Thali ho!

I live out in the sticks and benefit from having a lot of greenery outside the flat so slightly better air quality.  On the other hand we don't have the wide range of entertainment options of the more developed suburbs but it's not all bad.  Our local mall has a Starbucks and Cafe Moshe and a couple of decent eating places too and we have the Westin Hotel within walking distance too.

I'm still not eating after a thali blow out last nigh at Oberoi Mall's Maharaja Bhog.  Six of us stumbled out stuffed full of delicious Gujurat/Rajastan food and wandered in a food induced daze to BBC, a British themed pub.  We could do little more than look at the beers we ordered and take turns in sighing contentedly.

Beware the surreptitious bowl fillers who sneak up on your blind side and replenish everything - often.

Crumbs

Dear Asia
there seems to be a disconnect with us.  Why don't you like your toast brown?

From Laos to Indonesia, from the Philippines to India I've been served up slightly warm, slightly dried out bread claiming to be toast.  I've had solicitous waiters almost snatch the bread from my plate when I've passed it through the toaster three times to get a tinge of gold on the surfaces and apologise profusely about their toaster malfunctioning.

It's not,  I know, that grilled and toasted things are disliked.  I've been served delicious crunchy, carbonised food all over the place but never, ever a single piece of golden toast.

Dear Asia,

toast is not meant to be this colour.
Thank you for your attention.

Edit: except for Singapore, they know how to toast a slice of bread there.

The little things

Today I ate a pretty good lunch at the branch of  Mia Cucina in Powai.   I accidentally made a delicious and smiley oil and balsamic baby and was so inexplicably pleased with myself that I felt the need to share.  

Happy New Year

Produce

The range and quality of fresh produce is a constant pleasure whether you just take pictures of it or actually get around to cooking the stuff.

Chili emporium



Farm goods on the way to market

Fast Food Saigon Style

Sure, the streets are full of vendors selling all manner of tasty Vietnamese treats but the fast food chains are making steady inroads too.

KFC franchises are probably the most numerous.

Jollibee, the Philippines contender for the burger crown is well established. At least their happy bee mascot isn't as creepy as the clown used by McDonald's.

At the higher end of the market Illy cafes have sprung up jostling with Gloria Jeans, Highlands Coffee and, more recently, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to capture cafe high society.

I wonder if we'll ever get a Greggs ?

Annam Gourmet

Phu My Hung; variously branded as “The Saigon of the Future”, “Saigapore” and “Little Seoul” is home to many expats and upwardly mobile Vietnamese. It’s very family friendly and clean but lacks in atmosphere. For those reasons I wouldn’t want to live there but crucially my price range would only reach to apartments and I’ve been spoiled by living in a house. I do use Phu My Hung regularly though especially since Co-op Citymart is the best supermarket in town.

And now, identifying Phu My Hung as indeed a place to be Annam Gourmet have moved in with their polished wood, fancy lighting, imported goods and natty sales assistant. Coffee pavilion coming soon.

So overwhelmed was I by the shopping experience that I bought: my second choice of butter, bread I don’t like, jam in a flavour I wouldn’t normally entertain and a bottle of rose wine because it was in a chiller cabinet. I’ll be more selective next time. The wine was nice though.

Happy Birthday Blog

I realised it has been more than two years since I started this, we had a lovely meal at the refinery, not to celebrate the blog, that momentous event passed entirely unnoticed until after the meal but it's a good tenuous link to food pictures.

The Refinery is a nice space, we ate in the courtyard where there are lots of fans and cool shade. The building used to be an opium factory hence the name and the use of poppies as a logo.

Good food, who could find fault with heart shaped cous cous and pak choi that stands to attention? The mashed potato was also heart shaped but my dining companion had already delved into it by the time I whipped my camera out.

Chom Chom Time

Yet another fruit related post. Chom Choms, more likely known as rambutans outside Vietnam, are available pretty much all year round. They rank up there along with mangoes as one of my Top Fruits. They were breakfast this morning.

These were a particularly tasty batch, so much so that I forgot all about taking a picture of them until all that was left was this:

Dragon Fruit

Continuing on the fruit trail. The fruit of the day is Dragon Fruit. I hadn't tried this before coming to Vietnam but it's one of my favourites now, it has a slight Kiwi fruit taste but it's the look and texture that I go a bundle for.



This one cost 50p or 78 us cents at the current exchange rate


but it was a particularly big one.

Fruit day part 2

In the second fruit related post of the day Stephen makes orange juice.

Hand processed is apparently best, it takes four green oranges to make two glasses of juice.

Oranges - Fivimart

Glasses - free with Lipton Tea

Squeezer - model's own.

O'Brien's bar

O'Brien's Factory on Hai Ba Trung has a nice bar and the beer isn't bad either.

Street Food Images, Saigon

Dong Du, District 1, this area is a tourist hotspot and high end stores and hawkers selling fakes abound but side by side to street restaurants and temporary tables.


Banh Mi Mackerel, this brightly branded sandwich cart off Hai Bai Trung has caught my eye for a while but this is the first time I've been anywhere near it with a camera and with enough time to wait for a break in the traffic to capture it.

Crunchy Collons

I tried a new snack food because I couldn't resist the name. Strawberry Collons



Also avaiable in chocolate and cream flavours. Indeed they do look a little like small sections of colon.



The wafer shell is very light and crisp and the filling is slightly gritty but not in a distasteful way and tastes more pink than strawberry but I'm assured they're made with real strawberry juice. They're quite nice if a little oversweet for my taste but I'd eat collon again.




Here you can see the ridged texture of the shell and a bit of my mustard sofa and seventies type wall units (soon to be a thing of the past if plans work out).


If you live in the UK and want to experience collon yourself they're available from CyberCandy who also offer the supreme Double Chocolate Collon and the Choco Puff Collon. Treat yourself

Things I've eaten, or tried to.

I work on the theory that if something is fruit or fruit related it can't be that bad. I've even tried durian which tasted like dairylea cheese and onions to me. It didn't make me gag but I didn't go back for seconds either.

Then I saw these in a supermarket:



It's official, tomato is a fruit, of course, working on that premise so is sweetcorn. I thought I'd give them a try. Clearly I'm not as brave fruitwise as I like to pretend because I bought them two months ago and they've been hiding at the back of the food shelves since then.



I went for the sweetcorn first, it seemed less scary, I've had sweetcorn sprinkled on ice cream before and it wasn't too bad. Tasting notes: strong initial taste of petrol which mellows to rubber with a tang of raw sweetcorn thrown in. Did I finish it? No, I got to the chewing stage and gave up when my gag reflex hit in.

Tomato candy frightened me without tasting it but I forced myself.



Knowledge tells us that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom prevents us from putting it into fruit salad.
-Miles Kington
This Korean delicacy was sticky and gummy on the outside, I'm not sure if that's deliberate or caused by the amount of time it's hung around in the apartment. Taste? Half an hour later and a glass of water with lemon juice and my mouth still tastes disgusting. It's sweet of course but the oddest thing about it is that it really tastes of tomato, it should, it proudly boasts Tomato powder as an ingredient. It tasted powerfully of slightly metalic tomato doused in sugar syrup. I can't fully explain how revolting I found this. Did I finish it, no, I barely got the sticky stuff off the outside before I was heading for the bin. They're a tough bunch the Koreans. I'm going to test it out on colleagues today.

Official food bravey rating: Wuss

Holiday pictures, Laos

I finally got around to uploading the remaining pictures of Laos to Flickr. There are still several hundred on the hard drive waiting to be sorted out but I thought I'd share a few here before I get back to the business of everyday life in Vietnam.

Food and Food related stuff

Woven baskets for holding sticky rice, eaten with your fingers and served at most meals. It's the most substantial rice I've eaten.


Collecting and processing water weed, it looks like the same bright green, fibrous stuff you see growing in rivers all over the place, I didn't know it was edible but it's sold in hanks in markets in Laos. It's deep fried before eating and the younger stuff is considered better because it's less tough.


Noodle soup, part of the package on the VIP bus from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. Beer Laos not included in price.


It was orange season and the air by the river smelled wonderful, even at night when the oranges were all away.

Transport
Tuk Tuk

Tuk tuks and similar vehicles are the main form of in town transport, there's a good bus network for going further afield. Tuk tuks are cool during the day, chilly at night and dusty whenever you get out of town but they're much more interesting to ride than taxis. This was taken on New Years Day in Luang Prabang, called International New Year, Laos has it's own, Tet is celebrated by many and the ethnic minorities have their own New Year too, good place to go if you like fresh starts.


Sorry about the lamp post in the foreground but I coudn't get a better angle. This is King Of Bus, the VIP bus from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. There are two a day and for $6 you get air conditioning, pretty good suspension, endless Lao Pop videos, water, a wet wipe, a cake and lunch. You also see some of the world's most stunning mountain scenery. I couldn't get any pictures of it because we didn't stop going through the mountains and my camera's anti shake just wasn't up to coping with it.

We were dreading a nine hour bus journey and wishing we'd got better organised to fly back down to Vientiane but it turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.


Lots of Vespas and Piaggios around Laos, most in excellent condition. The country is landlocked so there's very little salt in the air hence little rust. I loved this one with a sidecar but couldn't imagine sitting in it in HCMC.


Stephen takes the lead while taking elephants down for a bath in the river. I'm at the back right stepping out of line on the biggest elephant of them all. They were incredible creatures and while we didn't get anywhere near controlling them they and the mahouts were very indulgent and let us believe we were in charge.

We spent the night in a little hut on stilts and at dawn took ourselves and the elephants for a morning bath, then we got to take off the silly mahout suits.


We flew Air Loas to Luang Prabang in a plane I've never heard of with the most garish upholstery and seats that flipped forward to let people in and out. This picture makes domestic departures look quite swish, it's not but it's efficient and got us where we were going.

Scenery

Finally some random images of things I saw and liked.

Sunsets


Orange candles



Young monks



Reflections



Tad Sae Waterfall




Images of Buddha





If you get a chance, go.

Laos

We had an amazing trip to Loas flying into Vientiane from Saigon via Cambodia. We liked it so much that we left a lot unseen as it's fairly obvious we're going to go back.



The architecture and statues are stunning, I filled two memory cards on the camera. If you want to see them all (and frankly I can't think of a better way of spending four hours than looking at someone elses holiday pictures) click on any of the pictures to go to Flickr.

Food is fresh and tasty, there are a lot of higher end restaurants in Vientiane and Luang Prabang but we honestly didn't have one bad meal no matter where we ate. Well, there was the weird sweet curry in Vientiane but that was par for the course because it was Stephens birthday and he always gets a dodgy curry on that day.


There were men in santa hats.


Around every corner was a classic image.


Honest Tourist Attraction notices



and we even found a bar dimly lit enough to feel seedy





The lasting memory though has to be spending two days with elephants. More on that in a later post. Meanwhile here's my elephant having a snack.