Ok, there's a Vietnamese resteraunt down the street from my apartment

and I'm dieing to go, but I know absolutely very little about vietnamese cuisine. Any suggestions by anyone?

Stay away from the salted lemonade.
If they have some weird jello dessert, try it.

Ca Ri Ga = chicken curry
Ca Ri Ga Cai = chicken curry spicy

But beware - they may take your request to heart and make it super hot!

Its kind of a build your own dish

:D

...good stuff. You can add some hot sauce to bump up the heat.

Good, now I'm craving Vietnamese food... At least I'm able to momentarily block out the damned Windy's Frosty on the home page!

How's a DUer supposed to stay on a diet, peeps?!

Anybody...? :shrug:

To me Vietnamese is similar to Chinese except a little lighter and fresher, and with less fat. France occupied Vietnam for 100 years, so they picked up some of the French ideas about food. French bread is common in Vietnam and in Vietnamese food stores in the U.S.

go for the Pho!

ask them what sauces to put on it to be authentic

:9

mmmmmmm...

it's to die for


:hide:

OH NO HE DIDN'T!!!1

:popcorn:

you did didn't you?

be honest :D

nt

Otherwise, the deal is off.
:P

The rolls which are fried and served hot are called Imperial rolls. Those are very much like eggrolls. They serve them with lettuce and mint, which you roll around one roll and dip it in a sauce. The sauce usually served, a fish sauce calle nuoc mam, is yucky. Just use regular soy sauce or something else. But far better (in my opinion anyway) are the Spring rolls, which are not fried, they are served cold. You can get them with shrimp or pork or vegetarian (tofu). They are served with a hoisin sauce with chopped peanuts - if the sauce arrives and there are no peanuts on top of the little cup of sauce, just ask for the peanuts. "Com Tay Cam" is a fried rice served in an earthen bowl, with delicious spices including anise, ginger, etc. The best drink is the iced coffee with condensed milk. You have to order it early, because it takes a while to drip. After it has dripped from the metal thing into the glass bottom, mix the milk and coffee together and pour it into the glass of ice that they bring to you. It's delicious - almost like a milkshake. But it's strong in caffeine!

You get a real buzz from that stuff.

:9

Vietnamese cooking is very delicate, flavorful and clean tasting, not fatty. It's not heavy like Chinese food.

Vietnamese sandwiches heavily influenced by the long time French presence.

First visit though get the fresh spring rolls and a bowl of pho. There are usually condiment trays on the table with at least one red pepper sauce and you can add as much as you'd like to spice up your pho. The condiments on the table usually include a hoisin-like sauce and nuoc mam (fish sauce.) Pho also arrives with a side plate of mint or Asian basil, lime wedges, bean sprouts, and sometimes other add-ons. You more or less build it as you go -- don't dump everything in at once because you want the leaves to be barely heated and the sprouts to remain crisp.

on the condiment plate with the sprouts, basil, limewedges etc.
That will add the heat.

I like PHo a lot, but those sandwiches are good and so are the vermicelli bowls.

I suspect they'd make you a special dish if you didn't see anything on the menu that you wanted. :)

As for spicy, just add a few t-spoons of their chili sauce, it's quite tasty.

Vermicelli with fried tofu and spicy fish sauce. Try some salty lemonade, too, if they have it. :9

There's also a kind of cross between a crepe and an omelet filled with bean sprouts and other vegetables.

I also like Vietnamese vegetable curry with fried tofu. :7

There's are several wrap-your-own-spring-roll thingies I forget the name of that are yummy. You wet the rice-whatever wrapper til it's clear & floppy, then stuff it with lettuce, cilantro, cucumber, some kinda meat, roll it up, and chow down.

Then there's some other thing where there's a communal deep fryer at the table and everyone just plops in their meat, takes it out and rolls up their rolls.

(trying to remember what all my gf's parents would serve when I had dinner with them)

Their chai-goi or whatever (fried spring rolls) are fucking AWESOME - but they're consider more filler - like bread before dinner.

But stay away from the duck eggs - unless eating little baby duck fetuses is your kinda thing.