Flavor Boulevard

If you have a handful of shrimp, some pork, some cassava roots, and a banana leaf, what would you do? I’d boil the cassava and hope it doesn’t kill me, throw the shrimp and pork in the skillet with some stir fry vegetable, and wouldn’t know why on earth I even have a banana leaf. That’s why I’m not a Vietnamese chef.

Banh bot loc. That’s what you can make out of a handful of shrimp, some pork, some cassava roots, and a banana leaf. We were looking at these banana wraps while waiting for our banh mi thit nuong at Huong’s, and the owner, noticing our cuckoo stare, kindly told us what they were. The simplicity of the name gives away the main step of making the banh: loc (filter) the bot (flour), in this case cassava flour, which makes it translucent and a tad chewy. The shrimp-pork stuffing is well seasoned so the banh is good by itself without nuoc mam. I have the feeling the stuffing is cooked separately before coated by the flour to be steamed, but how it is cooked I know not Here’s the recipe. But I wouldn’t bother, if you’re in San Jose, for only $3 you get 6 of these.
I’m not sure what food category banh bot loc belongs too, appetizer, perhaps? We had them for snack one night. The nice thing is that was 4 nights after we bought them from Huong’s, refrigerated, and microwaved for 2 minutes on high. They tasted perfectly fresh.

On a Saturday evening what would you want for dinner? Sure, I could stay in, fry an egg, heat up a can of corn and call it a meal, or order pizza, or go to a hamburger place in town just to say I go out every now and then, but would that really worth a Saturday evening? As usual, we use Citysearch to find new places. Chinese, Indian, Mexican, American, and Thai never make it to my list. Nothing against them, they’re just a bit too… usual. I’ll admit I can hardly distinguish enchilada from quesadilla (without looking them up on Wikipedia), because I don’t even remember when was the last time I ate something Mexican. I also can’t think of any Indian dishes other than curry and naan, because I’ve hardly had anything else remotely Indian. So those food definitely aren’t usual to me, but they are the usual options you get when someone takes you out to eat. Next in line boarding boredom plane is Italian. Tomato sauce, cheese, pasta, that’s about it, right?
5pm. We opt for Persian tonight.

Greeting us is an Asian lady. (By this point I would no longer be surprised if someone told me Californian meant Asian.) The door is kept opened, warm (no AC, of course) and welcoming (a dog almost ventures into the place had his owner not yanked him out). We choose a tiny table in the corner, looking out through the glass walls to the slow afternoon street. The menu is neatly placed on the front door, so we go in quickly placing our orders. Pomegranate chicken (khoresh-e fesenjan) and souffle (kuku-ye sabzi) we get.
The chicken comes with rice and a big plate of salad. The souffle comes with a tuft of salad and no rice, but a few dolmas. What is the white sauce on top of the dolmas? Please tell me if you know.

Does she arrange the smiley face on purpose? 🙂
This is the first time I have dolma. I later find out the leaves are grape leaves, and I taste something like mung bean and sticky rice in the roll, but other than that I can’t dissect the ingredients of a dolma. The grape leaves give a zing on the tongue, a little too tart, like a lime clinging tight to your taste buds. Hard to explain, it’s just a tight taste. The stuffing is mild, but not too plain. Next time eating dolmas I’d discard the leaves and go for the stuffing.

The souffle is much kinder to the taste buds. It’s like eating a veggie pudding. It tastes veggie and soft. I like how menus in America have detailed description of the dishes. I wouldn’t have been able to tell what was there otherwise.

What about the chicken?

It looks nothing like a dolma, not even close in colors, but it tastes like a dolma, only a degree higher of tart tightness. Is pomegranate related to grape?
My tongue curls and shrivels at the touch of the sauce, but it enjoys the tender, juicy, flavorful chicken meat under. I can handle only a few bites before giving the chicken to Mudpie, who is a fan of the sauce. Carnivore I may be, but plain ole souffle is a soothing delight.

For a little more than $15, we also get paper pita bread to warm up at the beginning and really caring service from the hostess throughout the whole meal. She thinks it is cute that we trade plates.

Address: Cafe Renaissance (Persian cuisine and American sandwiches)
321 Hamilton Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 321-6222

Except for the little houses with little gardens, and with cars replacing motorcycles, San Jose resembles Binh Thanh District in Saigon. I don’t know the demography of the city, or even of the state of California, but I saw Vietnamese everywhere when I was there. Palo Alto doesn’t breathe exclusively Vietnamese, but it has Asian everywhere. Gas stations, restaurants, office employees at Stanford, ladies walking by your dorm in the morning, the mall… But Palo Alto doesn’t have banh mi. San Jose does. And it has good banh mi. Mudpie found Thanh Huong’s Sandwich from Google (the sign on the building says Huong). Two out of three times we went to San Jose when I was in Palo Alto, we went to Thanh Huong’s. The other time we went to another banh mi place which didn’t have it as nicely as Thanh Huong’s does.

Here’s my hypothesis of how banh mi came about: the French colonized Vietnam and brought with them some baguette for breakfast, the Vietnamese looked at the French baguette, thought “what’s the point for being so long?”, made it shorter and lighter, kept the pâté and to heaven the cheese, cut it vertically, stuffed in some homemade grilled pork and pickled vegetable, added some soy sauce. Voilà. A banh mi – a banh (made of) wheat. Actually I don’t know what people originally ate banh mi with, I just know that it’s an all-day food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, after school snack, late night snack. The stuffing can be hot meat, cold meat, eggs, banana, sardines, tofu, pate. We always choose grilled pork when we get our banh mi.

It’s not the best quality pork, but the flavor is top notch. The right mixture of salt, sugar, garlic, onion, a little bit of time to sit and soak, and some hot grill. We always had too much food to eat banh mi right after we bought them, so we had it for lunch the day after. The fridge did a fine job preserving the taste. The oven helped bringing back the bread’s crunchiness, which meshed well with flavorful pork, pickled carrots and daikon, a thin spread of liver pâté (not the infamously bitter foie gras), a couple shooks of soy sauce, one or two sprigs of cilantro. I take out the cilantros, Mudpie likes them.
For $2.75, would you rather a couple of double cheese burgers from McDonald’s, a 6-inch sub from Subway (I think the price was raised not long ago and no longer less than $3?), or a banh mi thit nuong? I’d go with banh mi thit nuong every time.

Address: Hương Sandwiches (near San Jose State University)
404 S 2nd Street Ste A
San Jose, CA 95113
(408) 287-8688

It’s always interesting to read reviews online. A good place always has some reviews that smash them down mercilessly as if all those reviewers were served was a piece of wood with splinters and a side of mud. One thing people should keep in mind when they go to Vietnamese restaurants: order the house specialties. It’s in their name. It’s something they started out with and have earned a living from. It’s what they know best. It’s the difference between an authentic Vietnamese restaurant and a mass-production Chinese buffet. Try something else on the menu only if the specialty satisfies you, and if you want to be adventurous, well, keep your complaints to yourself. Adventures rarely bring satisfaction.

If you ate at Banh Cuon Tay Ho in Bellaire, Houston before, Banh Cuon Tay Ho in San Jose will satisfy your craving, but will not give you the oomph and aaahhhh. Small tables under a small roof, equipped with the usual tray of bottles of rooster chili sauce, soy sauce, some other kind of chili sauce I’m not sure if my tongue would allow me to try, and a huge bottle/vase of nuoc mam mixed with sugar, lime juice, water, and a moderate amount of chili pepper. Pictured above is the house specialty: banh cuon nhan thit (rice rolls stuffed with ground pork and minced wood ear mushroom), served on flowery melamine plate, with bean sprout and sliced cucumber for the bedding, one piece of unknown tempura, and 5 thin slices of cha lua. (Now if you had it in Bellaire, you’d have gotten 3 pieces of shrimp tempura.) Nonetheless it is good.

Also ordered is a serving of banh cuon thit nuong (banh cuon with barbecued pork stuffing). No bean sprout visible on the plate, no cucumber, lots of cilantro and fried shallots atop.

Embarrassingly I must admit I did toss a chunk of the banh cuon roll into the spoon of nuoc mam then into my mouth before I remembered to take a picture. It was very good. Bean sprouts were inside the rolls, so no funky chopstick pickups required. The meat was well seasoned enough that you don’t really need a pool of nuoc mam to buff up the taste. I’ll remember to order it again when I go to Banh Cuon Tay Ho in Bellaire, for comparison.
The TV in the small corner was speaking in Vietnamese. The people around us were speaking in Vietnamese. The waiters were speaking to us half in Vietnamese and half in English. Minus the food carts and woven baskets of goodies on the streets, it’s just so Vietnamese in San Jose.
Lunch for two plus tip was $16.
One more thing, Vietnamese restaurants don’t like to have a website for themselves, and if they do, it doesn’t seem very well updated. Either that, or the Banh Cuon Tay Ho #18 in Bellaire isn’t part of the corporation. And what’s up with the Chinese characters?

Address: Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ #8
2895 Senter Rd
San Jose, CA 95111
(408) 629-5229