Where we ate: Phá lấu Lan
This will be one in a series of snapshots of places we went to, usually on a whim. The sheer breadth of the food we encountered in just South Vietnam was fantastic, and I suspect that I only ate a small fraction of what I want to taste. I wrote on Medium about how we scoped out places to eat. Please read, and clap if you like it.
This was the site of two of our last dinners in Saigon. We were in D1 this time, a stone’s throw from Benh Thanh, East West Brewing, and in the heart of the hotels (including one that I’d walked out of after seeing that they wanted 75kVND for a coffee).
After a couple of beers we decided to get an early start scoping out dinner, as I assumed we were in a wasteland of bland food and bad pizza. In the the alley a few doors down, I saw this:
Well hello there.
We checked out a few other places, including a VERY likely looking cơm place, but ended up in back in the alley. I looked at the menu on the wall and had no idea what to order. I’d gotten pretty good at picking out words on menus, but none of these were familiar. We were lucky, though, as a kid was explaining to some visitors from Malaysia what the various items were, and pointing out the best ones. I heard the words “pork stomach” and refused to make eye contact with Sean, praying he hadn’t been listening. The kid assured us that the dry noodles were the best, but I wanted a bowl of that red stuff, and the quail eggs that were frying.
The cook had been pointedly ignoring us while we dithered, frying eggs in one pan and vegetables in the other, barking orders to her two younger sisters to clear tables, move chairs, bring spring rolls out. She was young--under 16, still in her school shirt. We ordered, she nodded, and went back to her booth. As I watched, she started the dried noodles for the Malaysian women, and I saw that the magic red stock went into that too. She called to her sister to start our quail eggs.
As soon as I asked if I could take her photo, she got that “I really don’t like photos.” face.
Our soup was simple: broth, egg noodles, pork stomach and liver, greens, bits of crispy pork. I’d never had stomach before: it was meaty and tender, not unlike heart. I avoid prolonged cooking of liver at home, but burbling in stock for hours did something amazing to it: it was porous, not mealy, soaking up the soup, only mildly livery among everything else that was going on.
I’m not a cooperative subject when hungry.
The eggs were definitely late night drinking food: fried in margarine in little cups in a skillet, flipped, topped with chives, and spooned onto water spinach. Then a generous handful of the pork crackling. Then the dried shredded pork. Mayonnaise, in those nice, tight ‘90s squiggles, so you get plenty in every bite. The stuff that was labeled “ketchup” and looked like raspberry coulis, overlayed in its own squiggles. Tiny cocktail forks. I worried about what I’d just signalled to the rest of the table, and dove in anyway. It was pretty good. The ketchup was probably 80% corn syrup and red coloring.
Photo by Sean Browning. Used with permission.
We were the last at the table to order, and while we ate, the cook ran her eyes down the table, picked up a pepsi and finished it. Then she crushed the can and flicked it, eyes still forward, behind her, before turning around and wiping down her post and counters, stirring the stock, emptying the container of egg shells. The post-rush routine was so familiar, I felt it in my feet. It was early on a Thursday--she’d probably go through the same routine another half dozen times.
Our last dinner in Saigon was on a Saturday, and we wanted to try the cơm place, but it was a weekday concern, and was closed. So back down the alley we went, this time for the dry noodles. Another diner made room for us, helped us order, and engaged in a running commentary while we watched the cook in street clothes, as she took calls, added coconut milk to the stock, and told a diner she didn’t have change for his 200k bill. I learned that the prevalence of sugar was very Vietnamese and the Korean tourists find the local food a bit sweet. Our new dining companion also told us that these stalls were famous among the younger foodie crowd in Saigon. I certainly felt like we’d picked a winner.
Photo by Sean Browning. Used with permission.
Okay, but what is it?
Phá lấu is an adaptation of a Southern Chinese dish. It contains pork offal in a spicy stock. As with many Vietnamese dishes, this basic preparation can be served a few ways, based on the diner’s choice served either in soup, with the broth on the side, or cooked with the noodles and vegetables as glazed dish, or served as broth and meat with a baguette on the side.
The eggs are bánh trứng cút, a term that seems to encompass both individually fried eggs with vegetables, mayonnaise and various pork products or wedges of the same.
