Mixed Rice and Gelato, Baria-Vungtau, Vietnam

Most breakfast places in Vungtau sell rice or noodle sets, but as I was hungering for something with more bite (read as more meat), I decided to walk around the town abit and see what else they had to offer. That was when I stumbled on this little queue. A mixed rice stall doing brisk business by packing a lot of lunch takeaways for people on their way to work. There were also numerous pre-packed bags of warm desserts to go.

Not knowing what was their specialty, we basically just requested for some of their "best dishes". An assortment was presented to us. The beef salad, soup and pork ribs were not bad but the winner in this assortment was the fried chicken with the tangy chilli sauce.

As such, we decided to order another serve of the fried chicken plus some grilled pork chops and deep-fried beancurd. All of them were pretty delicious but the chicken still took the cake. After this substantially savory and proteinaceous meal, I needed something sweet to finish it off but as the weather was rather warm, I had little interest in the pre-packed soup desserts and decided to scout around the town for something else, something cold.

That's when we chanced upon this gelato joint. After a brief chat with the owner we were informed that she had learnt her ice-cream making skills from a "Vietnamese master gelato maker" who migrated to Italy years ago where he honed his art. Interestingly enough, the flavors which made use of artificial syrups were more costly than the ones using natural fruits; she explained that the syrups were imported from Italy and therefore cost more. Needless to say, we chose the ones with natural fruits!

In order to taste a large variety of all their flavors (all seemed pretty good), we opted for their kem (ice-cream) special. Upon first taste, a refreshing burst of flavors surrounded my palate. These were really very good, from the top of my head, the flavors were jackfruit, durian, chocolate, strawberry, pandan, corn and taro. All of which were done very nicely indeed.

In addition to the gelatos we also ordered an ice-chocolate and a banh flan. The ice-chocolate, which I thought would be a drink turned out to be exactly what it was translated to be, some chocolate ice-cream and chocolate syrup on crushed ice! The banh flan however, was fantastic. Banh flan is basically creme caramel but there are quite a few variants in Vietnam. This cafe tops of the sweet and rich caramel with rich espresso coffee (instead of the caramel sauce) creating a bitter-sweet contrast which was just super.

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Hot Spring Eggs, Baria-Vungtau, Vietnam

In a more secluded area of Baria lies a hot spring resort which still allows you to cook your eggs in the hot spring water. I remembered how they allowed you to do that in the hot springs of Taiwan until the practice was banned due to health and hygiene reasons.

Pop some uncooked eggs into the rented baskets and slowly immerse them fully in the hot water. There are actually some cooking instructions on how long to leave them in there if you wanted them hard, semi-hard or still runny. But I guess all these instructions were pretty arbitary since the temperatures seemed to differ from various hot spring wells.

Apparently, these eggs are cooked inside-out, it's pretty hard to tell when they were all well-done.

Perhaps I was just really hungry or these were supposedly free-range eggs, but after a dash of salt and pepper, these did taste pretty damn good.

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Seafood in Loc An, Baria-Vungtau, Vietnam

On the way to Baria from Vungtau, we stopped by this pretty cool seafood restaurant in Loc An that serves the freshest seafood. The catch is either caught the day itself or from the man-made lagoons surrounding the restaurant, created for rearing various tasty morsels from the sea. These round fishing boats are unique to Vietnam and require a lot of skill to steer (like heaps!).

Raw fish salad, we ate this with rice paper like a roll. It was not too bad, but I was never really a fan of raw fish. Still, the tangy dressing made it rather refreshing.

These, I loved. Sundried shrimp that's subsequently charcoal grilled with some seasalt. Chewy and tasty, great stuff to go with beer!

The oysters are freshly shucked and grilled on the spot before being served. With just a drizzle of lime and salt and pepper, a few platters of these were easily wiped out.

There's always a place for steamed clams. The bits of ginger are put in to balance the overpowering scent of fresh clams but I never really was put off by overly "clammy" smelling clams anyway.

We were told they had some special crabs for us. So boy was I excited when this arrived.

Look at her, spread before us in full glory. A pity I'm not a fan of crab roe haha. I really appreciated their efforts but was actually hoping for something meatier. Nevertheless, this close-up is for all you crab roe lovers out there.

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Banh Mi, Baria-Vungtau, Vietnam

A review of the foods in Vietnam will never be complete without featuring banh mi. Banh mi basically means "bread". These bread loaves resemble sub-style mini baguettes and are ubiquitous in Vietnam; probably another reflection of their French colonial past. Banh mi comes with a variety of fillings, the most common one being "banh mi thit" which is basically a mixed meat sandwich with a very tasty pate spread. Other varieties include banh mi nem nuong (with the grilled sausage), banh mi ga (with chicken) or banh mi rao cai (just vegetables).

For simplicity's sake I'm lumping Baria and Vungtau together as a single province but they aren't really. Baria is about 20km from Vungtau. Baria has about 20 bakeries that make banh mi, of these 20, only three are still using traditional wood-fired ovens.

So here I was at the oldest wood-fired bakery to get my fresh and warm banh mi.

There's a lot of wood stocked outside to fire these ovens, not surprising since they hand-make (all the dough is kneaded by hand) about 2500 banh mi a day and always sell out!

So here I was with a warm banh mi in hand. What's in it? Was it a banh mi thit, banh mi nem nuong? It was just empty banh mi. The warm and crisp crust gave way to reveal the soft, chewy and delicious bread.

Plain banh mi and a cup of ultra thick Vietnamese coffee. Sometimes, the most enjoyable things in life are best kept simple.

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