Che Chuoi Nuong, Nha Trang, Vietnam

After the spectacular nem nuong, I was craving something sweet to end off the meal. That's when I chanced upon the perfect cure for this craving. A streetside dessert vendor, boy oh boy, could my day get any better?

There are many streetside vendors scattered around the streets of Vietnam. This one was selling ceh chuoi nuong which translates to "grilled banana dessert". It's not really just a banana grilled straight but it's coated in glutinous rice before being wrapped in some banana leaves and then grilled over charcoal till the banana is soft and warm. It's then doused with an excellent sauce of coconut cream further thickened with sago and topped off with crunchy peanuts.

Despite eating at places far and wide and with large diversities in price ranges, somehow my most memorable and satisfying meals are always by the streets. Crouched over a dingy table, eating from a chipped porcelain plate.

D

Nem Nuong, Nha Trang, Vietnam

Nha Trang is a seaside town about 450km from Ho Chi Minh. As a popular retreat for tourists and city dwellers, this place does get pretty touristy in some areas. Besides having some pretty excellent seafood, Nha Trang also has a particular store that does a kickass nem nuong (grilled pork sausage) and that's what I was here for.

With a crowd of so many locals, I knew this wouldn't be a wrong choice.

Nem Nuong tastes abit like a hybrid between a satay, kebab and Taiwan sausage. It's coated over a wooden stick and grilled over a charcoal flame. It tastes predominantly savory with a hint of sweetness. It's pretty tasty by itself but it's more commonly eaten as a rice paper wrap.

It's coupled together with some crispy bean skins, lettuce, herbs, cucumber, raw banana, raw mango and raw carambola (starfruit) slices.

It's then dipped in a tangy chilli fish sauce and inserted into a hungry mouth!

This place also serves bo luc lac which is a grilled beef dish that is commonly eaten with thick rice vermicelli. The slices here were well marinated but the cut of beef was just too slightly too tough. The nem nuong is what makes this place popular.

D

D's breakfast in Ho Chi Minh

Nothing beats waking up to the aroma of lemon grass porkchops sizzling on a streetside charcoal grill.

The chef allowed D to have a go as well. Since I was grilling the porkchops, how could I not step into this eating house (opposite Ben Thanh Market) to sample my own efforts?

Oc nhan thit (stuffed snails) for the appetizer. These consisted of the crunchy snail flesh mixed with tender minced pork supporting a lemon grass stalk as a handle. Very aromatic and tasty.

This is bot lom, it's essentially a steamed rice cake with a topping of savory mung bean paste. It's eaten with nem (fermented raw pork sausage) and sweet fish sauce.

This is a variation of banh cuon and basically contains tom (prawn). Like the banh cuon and bot lom, it's eaten with nem and sweet fish sauce as well. Both the bot lom and the banh cuon tom are eaten as snacks or starters as well.

Goi du du tom thit or raw paw paw salad with pork and prawn. It definitely tasted different from the Thai variation but was satisfyingly tangy enough to perk up my appetite for the rest of the meal.

Banh canh is a soup dish made with prawns and crab meat. This included two huge crab claws which were already shelled, so you could hold one in your hand and eat it like a drumstick.

Whatever happened to the grilled lemon grass pork chops? Here we go, it appeared on my plate of com tam or more commonly known as "broken rice". This came with the standard pâté, pork skin and vermicelli salad, semi-cooked sunny side-up egg, pickled carrots and radish and of course a freshly charcoal grilled lemon grass pork chop. Seems quite abit for breakfast doesn't it? But it is the most important meal of the day haha!

D

Streetside Shellfish, Ho Chi Minh

Many people go to clubs for various reasons. I don't always personally agree with their reasons but I do respect that they have the right to make their own decisions. I go to clubs nowadays for primarily only one reason - supper afterwards. It'll be something like this...

Clubber: Hey D, want to go clubbing?
D: Will there be food after?
Clubber: Yeah, I guess we could do supper...
D: I see you baby, shaking that ...

And that's how I found myself at this fabulous streetside shellfish stall late one night in Ho Chi Minh.

Charcoal grilled scallops basted with spring onions in flavored olive oil? I'm sold.

The first dish that was served were the grilled scallops. Basted with the flavored oil and topped off with peanuts. This was so good that we simply had to order another serve.

Stir-fried sea snails in a coconut gravy. The gravy being coconut cream based was pretty fragrant and tasty but the snails were only pretty ok. There was a nice crunchy bit when you first suck out the contents which was quite delectable but that was followed by a slimy bit which I didn't really appreciate.

Boiled blood cockles, these are fully boiled unlike the semi-raw ones served in Singapore. Well it tasted just like any blood cockle.

Grilled giant clams, these were done in similar fashion to the scallops but the clam flesh was sliced up before it was grilled. I liked this alot as well as the flesh had a nice crunch like squid but a stronger shellfish flavor almost akin to that of abalone.

All of this was topped off with steamed clams in a local rice wine and crushed lemon grass stalks. Fresh sweet clams cooked just right, what a way to end off our barrage of shellfish. As with most seafood in Vietnam, this went very well with the lime, salt and pepper dip.

Coincidentally this placed served vit lon (duck foetus egg) as well but although this was rather tasty since it was bathed in this strong flavored sauce, it wasn't the freshest I've had.

I still prefer the ga lon (chicken fetus egg) that I had in Queensland last year. Apparently, the number of eggs you could consume was an indication of how much of a man you are or was it the more eggs eaten would make you more of the man? Nevertheless, needless to say, I had twelve in one sitting.

D

Salted Peanuts, Some Club, Ho Chi Minh

The peanuts they serve at this club are extremely salty.

I mean, look at that amount of salt! I don't know if this was a ploy to get us thirsty to order more drinks but I'm sure if I dissolved this amount of salt in water and suspend a small bit off a popsicle stick, I could start my own salt crystal farm.

D

Pho 2000, Ho Chi Minh

Pho 2000 is considered slightly above upmarket to your typical street pho stalls and has garnered some popularity in particular for one reason...

Bill Clinton had his pho here when he visited Vietnam in 2000.

I started off with a serve of bun cha gio which consists of deep-fried pork and prawn springrolls over rice vermicelli. As with most Vietnamese dishes, it's the attention given to the small details that makes that special difference, such as the scatter of crushed peanuts on this, which imparted a crunchy fragrant taste.

But I was here for the pho and this huge bowl of pho bac biet was just what the doctor ordered. Pho bac biet is literally transalated as "pho special" but it's best described as a combination beef pho. This has most of the various cuts of cow including the tripe and beef balls (i.e. processed spherical minced beef shapes not the anatomical ones). The soup here is rich and tasty and the meat servings were generous too. A squeeze of fresh lime juice, a scatter of raw bean sprouts and pho leaves makes this traditional hearty beef meal indeed one to remember.

D

Banh Cuon, Ben Thanh Market, Ho Chi Minh

The original Ben Thanh market which was located on the shores of Ben Nghe river was destroyed quite some time ago back in 1859. But fret not because the "new" Ben Thanh market is still rather old after being relocated and rebuilt in 1899! This market sells everything, from food to clothes to raw materials, spices etc but if you have to try only one food stall here (which of course you won't!), it has to be this banh cuon stall which has been passed down from the women of the family over the generations.

There are many many varieties of Vietnamese rice paper rolls and springrolls. Banh cuon is best described as a warm and soft rice flour roll filled with minced pork, mushrooms and black fungus. The skins are made fresh here as very thin layers from a rice flour mixture.

As with most Vietnamese dishes, banh cuon is eaten with a sweet and tangy fish sauce. Wouldn't that be boring you think? All the dishes with fish sauce? There are more than 100 varieties of fish sauce in Vietnamese cuisine and they taste really quite different and unique from each other.

In addition to the fish sauce it's also eaten with cha lua (Vietnamese pork sausage/ham as seen on top the banh cuon), nem (fermented raw pork sausages), cucumber slices and bean sprouts. Indeed my trip had gotten off to a good start.

D

Shanghai Nan Xiang Xiao Long, Seng Poh Rd, Singapore

This place is located across the road from the Tiong Bahru market and is run and owned by mainlanders. Although they claim to be from the "Nan Xiang Xiao Long Pao" place from Yu Yuan in Shanghai, I don't know how true this claim is. Having dined at Yu Yuan in Shanghai, I still feel that their xiao long paos are better but this place comes close and gives me my fix in Singapore when I get my xiao long pao cravings.

They know the sequence of serving cold dishes first here, unlike some other Chinese eateries in Singapore which tend to serve the dishes randomly (as long as dessert comes at the end; it's all good hah!). Cold wine chicken, fragrant and salty, this dish is great with beer in a hot and humid Shanghai summer or just daily Singapore weather haha.

Water duck, another cold dish here and also an ideal salty side-dish for beer.

Stir-fried gluten, it was my first time ordering this and it was probably the bummer dish tonight. I just felt that it tasted too sweet.

Stir-fried large pea-shoots with garlic. Freshly cooked and piping hot, a tasty stir-fried vegetable is always good.

Fried buns (Jian Bao), these were almost as good as the ones I had in Shanghai (Xiao Yang Jian Pao) and was full of soup as well. You have to be careful when you bite into these because although it has alot of soup in it like the xiao long pao, it's encased in a harder exterior which makes it more prone to "popping" and hence propelling the hot soupy contents over a greater distance with much more impact.

Their xiao long paos.

The skin was only very slight tough at the top today but everything else was just as good as I remembered. I'll opt to come here over Crystal Jade anytime.

Noodles aren't really their specialty but they still serve a rather decent hand-pulled noodle with spicy bean minced pork (zhe jiang la-mien). The noodles didn't stick together which in my opinion is one pre-requisite for a good noodle.

This dessert of the fermented rice wine grains with glutinous rice was very good. Fragrant and not too sweet, this was the first time I tried this here and was rather impressed.

Their red bean pancakes were also stellar tonight. The pastry used is the thin crispy sort which I prefer a lot more as opposed to the flakey sort. The filling was also smooth and didn't only taste sweet but I detected a slight honey flavor as well? I'm not sure if it's honey but it defintely tasted like a molasse-based sweetener.

D

p.s: Am rushing to the airport right after I click "publish". Will be away for half a month. More food stuff when I return!

ABC Brickworks Food Centre

This was my second time here here since their make-over and I was here specifically to try the popular "Yuan Yuan" Claypot. We started off with a platter of Chinese barbecued pork from the stall facing the bakery. This was pretty good barbecued pork with just enough honey glaze to give it a sweet fragrance and enough charred and fatty bits for that smokey and greasy taste.

The claypot that Yuan Yuan serves is not bad. It's definitely above average with generous portions of sausage, chicken and salted fish but somehow I still prefer the one from Old Mother Hen. Maybe there's something about the salted egg yolk in their claypot which I tend to appreciate.

The fried Hokkien noodle here is done slightly wet but I think it's wet mostly due to grease and not stock haha. Nevertheless, it was quite tasty indeed although there was hardly any seafood in it.

Picked up some chicken satays from a side stall within the Hokkien noodle stall. Chunky portions but I felt they could have been marinated just a bit longer.

We ordered some of the barbecued chicken wings from another satay stall as well for protein supplementation just to round off the meal.

D