Le Bambou

If you know us, you know that we love pho. And though we can find great pho at home, we also had to explore the other side of the pho equation -- its French origins.

Our first stop was to Le Bambou in Paris' Chinatown. It was very strange how this restaurant felt both familiar and foreign at the same time...like Vietnamese spoken with a French accent. 

Familiar -- the veggie plate / Foreign -- mint instead of basil, lemon instead of lime

Familiar -- hot pot of jasmine tea / Foreign -- champagne-lychee aperitif 

Familiar -- noodles and beef / Foreign -- a murky, sweet broth and shaggy tangle of scallions 

We're not sure if Le Bambou's pho was some variation that we're not aware of, but it didn't quite hit the spot. However, it was solid and warmed us up on a chilly night. If this was the worst we could do in Paris, it wasn't too shabby at all. 

No Taste Like Home

Sometimes, we just can't stop thinking about a certain dish from our childhood...on this particular day, it was a plate of steaming hot sticky rice and topped with sliced lap xuong sausage that had been rendered and sauteed with scallions. 

Thank you, Moms, for this food inception!

Dat Thanh

We celebrated Christmas in Orange County with our families. Before heading back up, we needed one more Vietnamese food fix to tide us over.

Their cuon, bun and com tam were solid — fresh-tasting, not too greasy and only slightly mystery-meatish.

As we pulled out, we saw this thing...

...but judging from the LA Times, OC Register and others, Dat Thanh is already on the map.

Mitasie 3

We recently celebrated our carnivore friend's birthday by taking him to...a vegan Vietnamese restaurant. How very thoughtful, huh?

But it really wasn't as bad as he thought it would be...

 BBQ "pork" spring rolls

 Kung Pao "chicken" and salt & pepper "shrimp"

All in all, a very hearty and flavorful meal of hard-working soy products!

Phogettable

Sometimes that craving for Vietnamese food hits like a ton of bricks and we need to eat it like NOW. Unfortunately, we have yet to find a good Vietnamese restaurant west of Chinatown. But with each new place that pops up, our hope is renewed.

We were totally excited when Unphogettable opened and even more excited we finally had the opportunity to check it out.

After we ordered, cucumber water and accessories promptly followed.

Then came our first entree. This "vegetarian vermicelli" be shady. There were two kinds of egg rolls in it, and we think one kind totally had pork inside. Either that, or it was made with really funky, meaty veggies. Anyway, aside from making us feel kind of guilty, the bun was ok and just lacked the punch of tons of fresh Vietnamese herbs (love you, tia to).

Of course, we also had to try the pho. Now, we're of the belief that no pho is quite as good as mom's pho, and, in a pinch, the next best thing is a greasy bowl from Pho 79. So our expectations for any other pho are pretty low.

And thank goodness, because this pho was so mediocre and so...phogettable. Despite the cute signage that tried to convince us otherwise.

Reinventing a Classic

We love bun rieu, but had zero time or motivation to slave over a huge, steaming pot of broth.


So...we decided to experiment with making a DRY version of one of our fave Vietnamese dishes!

We lightly browned shallots, onions and garlic...threw in tomatoes to deglaze and create a sauce...added seasonings, shrimp and crab for some seafoody bun rieu goodness...dumped in some leftover rice noodles to soak it all up...and then topped it off with some scallions and Vietnamese herbs. A squeeze of lime and some chili-garlic sauce brought it all together.

And there you have our dry bun rieu! Simple, delicious and totally easy to eat while catching up on Entourage in front of the TV.

Hu Tieu Experiment

Sunday was a very disciplined day of staying at home and cleaning up our lil apartment, even though we could've made much better use of our time loitering at the Hollywood Farmers' Market or watching reruns on Bravo.

Staying in means cooking at home, and we were thinking about making pho, even though we didn't quite have all the ingredients.

Probably for some, hu tieu is very closely related to pho. For others, hu tieu is a carefully composed dish of various various meats and seafoods with fried shallots and a distinctly sweet broth.

For me, it's a catch-all for random odds and ends you have lying around. (Maybe I think this because my mom once told me never to order it at restaurants because they could just throw anything in there and I'd never know.) But it makes sense - don't you notice how pho is made from pretty much the same stuff, while hu tieu can vary drastically?

Anyway, my attempt at making hu tieu definitely followed the latter school of thought. Since we didn't have all the herbs and spices needed to make a proper pho, hu tieu was the next best thing


-E

A bunch of stuff (including two lobster tails unearthed from the freezer) + water = the stock

Sauteed lobster + sliced roast pork + shredded chicken breast = the protein. The rice noodles and scallions were what we would've normally used for pho. There are probably a bunch of other toppings we were supposed to add.

Accessories -- it benefitted from a squeeze of lemon and a little dollop of the chili garlic paste

Our wannabe hu tieu was pretty good, but don't take our word for it! Neither of us know what's really supposed to go in it, and what it's supposed to taste like. But not bad for a random ingredient use-up.

Warm-weather Food

It was really warm last night in our stuffy shoebox of an apartment, so we decided to McGuyver together some bun. You don't have to slave over a hot stove for too long to make it, and it's cool and refreshing. Because we're sooooo spontaneous and crazy, we added some rice paper wrappers, making our bun into cuon.

Ignore the sad-looking fish (pulled from the depths of the freezer) and wilting herbs (bought earlier in the week and languishing in the heat). Luckily, the nice thing about cuon is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and despite cutting a few corners, it still tasted good.

And because we're so klassy and tasteful, we accessorized with some scallion oil and peanuts. And real china! (But not cuz we wanted to -- the wrappers didn't fit on our usual paper plates...hehe.)