Flavor Boulevard

We Asians like to talk food.
Subscribe

Sleeky banh soup

January 09, 2009 By: Mai Truong Category: Central Vietnamese, Comfort food, Houston, noodle soup, Southern Vietnamese, Texas, Vietnamese


Almost every Sunday we make a trip to Bellaire to get the usual supply of patechaud, cha lua, banh gio, and the like. Almost every Sunday the question’s asked: where will we eat today? Well, there are two choices: the all-too-familiar Kim Son, and the more adventurous find which can be anything Little Mother saw in the local Vietnamese newspaper ads. We’ve had our handfuls of adventurous finds, all are good, but as usual smaller places don’t have a big selection, the menus are either common banh mi and pho, or grandiose names we don’t particularly care for. Mother is also easily shy away by the appearance of a restaurant: if the setting doesn’t look good, the food won’t taste good. So back we headed to Kim Son today…

We opted for the popular choice of a lunch buffet. We got there early enough, meaning at 11, when it’s just opened and there was banh canh. 15 minutes later and it was all gone. Out of banh canh noodle they said. The soup is not left unattended like the rest of the food trays known and visited by many. No, that would have reduced the availability to 5 minutes. It’s hidden in the right corner of the diner, in something can appropriately be called a kitchen box, with fellow roasted ducks and another noodle soup of the day. You go over there, order, stand around watching the cook slap a bunch of noodle, shrimp and pork, and pour a couple ladles of steaming broth into your bowl, you go back to your seat and start slurping. It’s really slurping, even chopsticks have a hard time holding the noodles in place long enough, don’t even try spoon and fork. They’re quick, short, round, and annoyingly feeble. It’s too easy to break them, but it’s hard to put them in your mouth before you flick a drop of broth to somewhere it shouldn’t be. The taste is worth the sloppy embarrassment, though. Banh canh and hu tiu are somewhat similar, the final touch in each bowl is a dollop of mo hanh (chives stir fried in lard and fried shallots). It adds savoriness, enhances the mix of meaty and sweet. A very hearty soup. I even drank the broth. The small bowl is a perfect belly hit.


Not to be healthy I packed a few frog legs and fried shrimp-pasted toasts down my throat afterwards. Great baguette. Frog legs would have been great too if not for the irritatingly overloaded hot pepper. When something’s hot, it’s just hot. Hot overpowers everything. Can’t taste another daggum flavor, if there were any. Dunno about you but I find that boring. The meat is kinda dry (I would be too if I were covered in hot pepper) and sinewy. But they do look sporty, don’t they? ๐Ÿ™‚


The other soup of the day was bun bo Hue, which we’ve had, and I’ve blogged, here. Looks good, eh? Spicy, too. It’d be good to have intermittent sips of water, given you have a full glass. Kim Son is usually crowded after 11:30, at which time there are too few waiters for too many tables, and it’s expected that you fend for yourself. Yes, that means no refill. Vietnamese scoffers are used to drinking only after the meal anyway. They believe that drinking during eating would result to feeling full immaturely, or making your belly bigger. Maybe that’s why my jeans feel tight…

0 Comments to “Sleeky banh soup”


  1. Hello! I just would like to give a huge thumbs up for the great info you have here on this post. I will be coming back to your blog for more soon.

    1
  2. Many thanks for sharing such valuable post. I truly enjoy your web page. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment on your web page. I would love to see more interesting posts from you soon.

    2
  3. ์ฃผ์†Œ์ฝ˜์—์„œ ํ•„์š”ํ•œ ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ๋ฅผ ๋ถ„์•ผ๋ณ„๋กœ ์‚ดํŽด๋ณด์„ธ์š”. ๋‰ด์Šค, ์ปค๋ฎค๋‹ˆํ‹ฐ, ์˜์ƒ, ์›นํˆฐ, ์‡ผํ•‘, ์ƒํ™œ ์ •๋ณด์™€ ์˜จ๋ผ์ธ ๋„๊ตฌ๋ฅผ ์ฐพ๋Š” ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๋ถ€ํ„ฐ ์ฃผ์†Œ ํ™•์ธ, ์ฆ๊ฒจ์ฐพ๊ธฐ ๊ด€๋ฆฌ, ์ ‘์† ์˜ค๋ฅ˜ ํ•ด๊ฒฐ๊นŒ์ง€ ์•ˆ๋‚ดํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๋ชฉ์ ์— ๋งž๋Š” ๋งํฌ๋ฅผ ๊ณ ๋ฅด๊ณ  ๋” ํŽธ๋ฆฌํ•˜๊ฒŒ ์ด์šฉํ•˜์„ธ์š”.

    3
  4. Hi, i think that i saw you visited my website thus i came to โ€œreturn the favorโ€.I’m attempting to find things to improve my website!I suppose its ok to use some of your ideas!!

    4
  5. When I originally commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get several emails with the same comment. Is there any way you can remove me from that service? Many thanks!

    5
  6. Very interesting topic, appreciate it for putting up.

    6
  7. I’m typically to running a blog and i really recognize your content. The article has actually peaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your website and maintain checking for brand spanking new information.

    7
  8. Hey! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new iphone 3gs! Just wanted to say I love reading your blog and look forward to all your posts! Keep up the excellent work!

    8
  9. We are a group of volunteers and starting a new scheme in our community. Your web site provided us with valuable information to work on. You’ve done a formidable job and our entire community will be thankful to you.

    9
  10. I like what you guys are up too. Such intelligent work and reporting! Keep up the excellent works guys I’ve incorporated you guys to my blogroll. I think it will improve the value of my website :).

    10
  11. ์ฃผ์†Œ์ฝ˜์—์„œ ํ•„์š”ํ•œ ์›น์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ฅผ ์‰ฝ๊ณ  ๋น ๋ฅด๊ฒŒ ์ฐพ์•„๋ณด์„ธ์š”. ๋ถ„์•ผ๋ณ„ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ชจ์Œ๊ณผ ๋งํฌ๋ชจ์Œ, ์ฃผ์†Œ์ฐพ๊ธฐ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๋ถ€ํ„ฐ ๋ณ€๊ฒฝ๋œ ์ฃผ์†Œ ํ™•์ธ, ์•ˆ์ „ํ•œ ๋งํฌ ํ™•์ธ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๊นŒ์ง€ ํ•œ๋ˆˆ์— ์‚ดํŽด๋ณผ ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

    11
  12. ์ฃผ์†Œ์ฝ˜์—์„œ ํ•„์š”ํ•œ ์›น์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ฅผ ์‰ฝ๊ณ  ๋น ๋ฅด๊ฒŒ ์ฐพ์•„๋ณด์„ธ์š”. ๋ถ„์•ผ๋ณ„ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ชจ์Œ๊ณผ ๋งํฌ๋ชจ์Œ, ์ฃผ์†Œ์ฐพ๊ธฐ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๋ถ€ํ„ฐ ๋ณ€๊ฒฝ๋œ ์ฃผ์†Œ ํ™•์ธ, ์•ˆ์ „ํ•œ ๋งํฌ ํ™•์ธ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๊นŒ์ง€ ํ•œ๋ˆˆ์— ์‚ดํŽด๋ณผ ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

    12
  13. I am no longer certain where you are getting your info, but good topic. I must spend a while studying much more or working out more. Thank you for fantastic info I used to be looking for this information for my mission.

    13
  14. I think that is one of the such a lot important info for me. And i’m glad studying your article. However wanna remark on few common things, The web site taste is perfect, the articles is actually nice :D. Good activity, cheers

    14
  15. ์ฃผ์†Œ์ฝ˜์—์„œ ํ•„์š”ํ•œ ์›น์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ฅผ ์‰ฝ๊ณ  ๋น ๋ฅด๊ฒŒ ์ฐพ์•„๋ณด์„ธ์š”. ๋ถ„์•ผ๋ณ„ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ชจ์Œ๊ณผ ๋งํฌ๋ชจ์Œ, ์ฃผ์†Œ์ฐพ๊ธฐ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๋ถ€ํ„ฐ ๋ณ€๊ฒฝ๋œ ์ฃผ์†Œ ํ™•์ธ, ์•ˆ์ „ํ•œ ๋งํฌ ํ™•์ธ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๊นŒ์ง€ ํ•œ๋ˆˆ์— ์‚ดํŽด๋ณผ ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

    15
  16. I really like your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you make this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you? Plz reply as I’m looking to create my own blog and would like to know where u got this from. thanks

    16
  17. I like this web site because so much utile material on here :D.

    17
  18. ์ฃผ์†Œ์ฝ˜์€ ์ž์ฃผ ์ฐพ๋Š” ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ์˜ ์ตœ์‹ ์ฃผ์†Œ์™€ ๋ณ€๊ฒฝ๋œ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ฅผ ์นดํ…Œ๊ณ ๋ฆฌ๋ณ„๋กœ ์ •๋ฆฌํ•œ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ชจ์Œยท๋งํฌ๋ชจ์Œ ํ”Œ๋žซํผ์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์‹ค์‹œ๊ฐ„์œผ๋กœ ์—…๋ฐ์ดํŠธ๋˜๋Š” ๋ฐ”๋กœ๊ฐ€๊ธฐ ๋งํฌ๋กœ ์›ํ•˜๋Š” ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ์— ๋น ๋ฅด๊ฒŒ ์ ‘์†ํ•˜์„ธ์š”.

    18
  19. I regard something really special in this site.

    19
  20. Pretty! This was a really wonderful post. Thank you for your provided information.

    20
  21. ์ฃผ์†Œ์ฝ˜์€ ์ž์ฃผ ์ฐพ๋Š” ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ์˜ ์ตœ์‹ ์ฃผ์†Œ์™€ ๋ณ€๊ฒฝ๋œ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ฅผ ์นดํ…Œ๊ณ ๋ฆฌ๋ณ„๋กœ ์ •๋ฆฌํ•œ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ชจ์Œยท๋งํฌ๋ชจ์Œ ํ”Œ๋žซํผ์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์‹ค์‹œ๊ฐ„์œผ๋กœ ์—…๋ฐ์ดํŠธ๋˜๋Š” ๋ฐ”๋กœ๊ฐ€๊ธฐ ๋งํฌ๋กœ ์›ํ•˜๋Š” ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ์— ๋น ๋ฅด๊ฒŒ ์ ‘์†ํ•˜์„ธ์š”.

    21
  22. After study a few of the blog posts on your website now, and I truly like your way of blogging. I bookmarked it to my bookmark website list and will be checking back soon. Pls check out my web site as well and let me know what you think.

    22
  23. Hi there, I found your site via Google while looking for a related topic, your website came up, it looks good. I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.

    23
  24. Exactly what I was searching for, regards for posting.

    24
  25. I couldn’t resist commenting

    25
  26. I like this blog very much so much superb info .

    26
  27. hello there and thank you for your information โ€“ I have certainly picked up something new from right here. I did however expertise some technical issues using this site, since I experienced to reload the website a lot of times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I had been wondering if your web host is OK? Not that I am complaining, but slow loading instances times will sometimes affect your placement in google and can damage your quality score if ads and marketing with Adwords. Well I am adding this RSS to my email and could look out for much more of your respective fascinating content. Make sure you update this again soon..

    27
  28. Perfect piece of work you have done, this web site is really cool with wonderful info .

    28
  29. Wow! This could be one particular of the most beneficial blogs We’ve ever arrive across on this subject. Basically Wonderful. I am also an expert in this topic therefore I can understand your hard work.

    29
  30. Hey! Would you mind if I share your blog with my twitter group? There’s a lot of people that I think would really appreciate your content. Please let me know. Many thanks

    30
  31. My spouse and I absolutely love your blog and find the majority of your post’s to be just what I’m looking for. Would you offer guest writers to write content to suit your needs? I wouldn’t mind producing a post or elaborating on a lot of the subjects you write about here. Again, awesome weblog!

    31
  32. Hello there, I discovered your website by way of Google even as searching for a comparable subject, your web site got here up, it seems good. I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.

    32
  33. Some times its a pain in the ass to read what blog owners wrote but this site is very user genial! .

    33
  34. Excellent beat ! I would like to apprentice even as you amend your web site, how can i subscribe for a blog web site? The account aided me a acceptable deal. I have been a little bit familiar of this your broadcast offered vibrant clear concept

    34
  35. I would like to thnkx for the efforts you have put in writing this blog. I am hoping the same high-grade blog post from you in the upcoming as well. In fact your creative writing abilities has inspired me to get my own blog now. Really the blogging is spreading its wings quickly. Your write up is a good example of it.

    35
  36. I do not even know how I finished up right here, however I assumed this submit used to be great. I do not recognize who you’re but definitely you’re going to a famous blogger in case you are not already ๐Ÿ˜‰ Cheers!

    36
  37. Hello there, I found your website via Google while searching for a related topic, your website came up, it looks great. I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.

    37
  38. This really answered my problem, thank you!

    38
  39. Howdy! This is kind of off topic but I need some help from an established blog. Is it tough to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty quick. I’m thinking about creating my own but I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any tips or suggestions? Thank you

    39
  40. fantastic points altogether, you just received a new reader. What might you suggest in regards to your post that you just made some days in the past? Any sure?

    40
  41. I dugg some of you post as I thought they were handy very helpful

    41
  42. Thanks for sharing excellent informations. Your site is very cool. I’m impressed by the details that you’ve on this web site. It reveals how nicely you perceive this subject. Bookmarked this web page, will come back for more articles. You, my pal, ROCK! I found simply the information I already searched everywhere and just couldn’t come across. What a great website.

    42
  43. I like gathering useful information , this post has got me even more info! .

    43
  44. I just could not depart your site prior to suggesting that I extremely enjoyed the standard information a person provide for your visitors? Is gonna be back often in order to check up on new posts

    44
  45. Youre so cool! I dont suppose Ive read something like this before. So good to find any individual with some authentic thoughts on this subject. realy thanks for beginning this up. this web site is one thing that is needed on the net, somebody with just a little originality. useful job for bringing something new to the web!

    45
  46. I dugg some of you post as I thought they were invaluable very useful

    46
  47. Some truly nice stuff on this site, I enjoy it.

    47
  48. I simply couldn’t depart your web site before suggesting that I extremely loved the standard information an individual supply in your guests? Is gonna be again continuously to investigate cross-check new posts.

    48
  49. There may be noticeably a bundle to learn about this. I assume you made sure nice points in features also.

    49
  50. Some really nice and useful info on this website , besides I conceive the style holds fantastic features.

    50


Leave a Reply