Flavor Boulevard

Tag: broken rice

  • Com tam at a tiny joint in Oakland Chinatown

      A guy waved a bottle in front of me. “Nesquik?”, he asked. I shook my head no thanks. Five seconds after he walked away, I realized my stupidity. I missed a free bottle of Nesquik! I don’t remember drinking Nesquik for the past 15 years, or ever, but I know what it tastes like, and I like chocolate. Why did I say no?!

      Because I live in Berkeley. One thing Berkeley trains you very well for is saying no. Each time you walk pass a homeless man or woman, whether he or she asks for spare change or curses you off or shouts “nice dress”, you silently say no. Each time an activist steps up to you and says “Hi how’s it going? Would you have a minute to talk about …?” and you can barely tell what it’s about because he or she squeezes those two sentences in the hundredth of a second you lift your foot, you say no, usually with a smile because you feel bad. So you prepare this automatic respond when a stranger sticks something under your nose: No thank you. And you end up missing the free Nesquik.

      But Berkeley also makes you nicer. And it’s not because the hippies convince you about world peace or anything. First it’s because you travel by bus. The bus always comes late, and not everyone sitting next to you has showered in the past 30 days, so you learn patience. Second, it’s because, as the saying goes, “it’s Berkeley, you can do anything“, and people, including you, wouldn’t bat an eye, so you learn acceptance. Then there’s the protests (boy do Berkeley students love protests, although those never yield any result beside some kid ending up behind a police car). I could list a dozen other reasons. But mostly, it’s because you see everybody from every corner of the world. My first encounters with the Serbian, Iranian, Bosnian, Tibetan, Korean, Japanese, Eritrean, Ethiopian people, and the smell of marijuana all happened in Berkeley. And those encounters (except the marijuana) quickly became friendships.

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    • Thiên Hương makes the best broken rice


        I like those restaurants that specialize. You go there and you know exactly what you’re gonna get: the one thing that the chefs make and that everyone else gets.


        Cơm Tấm Thiên Hương uses two full pages to write all different combinations of their one dish: cơm tấm (broken rice) with meats, egg, and tofu. If they just list the “toppings” and their corresponding price, like for a pizza, the menu would condense down to the size of a calculator. Common toppings for broken rice are grilled pork (or chicken, or beef), chả trứng (egg loaf), tàu hủ ki (flaky fried tofu), bì (shredded pork skin), and fancier, chạo tôm (shrimp sausage on sugarcane). If you can choose up to 4 toppings on your plate, combinatorics tells us that’s 98 possible combinations. If you read Thiên Hương’s two-page menu and don’t see your perfect fit, just tell the waiter what you’d like. Broken rice can be custom-made, so to speak.


        What makes broken rice superior to normal rice is its broken nature. Through milling, the germs, which are about 1/10 of a rice grain, break away from the endosperms (the part we eat and call “white rice”) and get mixed with other broken bits of the grains to form “tấm“. Millers used to collect tấm from the whole grains as an accidental byproduct and sell it at a cheaper price, but many people came to recognize that cooked tấm gives a better fragrance and tastes sweeter than normal rice, since it’s the most nourished part of a grain. By and by its popularity rises, factories these days even purposefully choose good rice to fracture and produce good broken rice with different desired ratios of germ to broken endosperm. The more germ the better, of course, but also the harder it is to cook. The germs don’t expand as much as the endosperm while boiled, the best cơm tấm comes by steaming tấm that has been soaked for a few hours in cold water. The grain bits then don’t cling to each other like normal rice, its texture as a whole is fine and dainty (similar to couscous). Pour in a few spoonfuls of the all-time sweet and savory nước mắm and cơm tấm is complete.

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      • Cao Nguyen in San Jose


          The literal translation is “highland”, but for most Vietnamese the word Cao Nguyên brings to mind images of eye-soothing green terraces, people of ethnic minorities in colorful traditional dresses and hoop and ring jewelries, dancing around the fire, drinking rice wine with a meter-long straw out of a communal urn, and simple but sturdy stilt houses above ground. In San Jose, Cao Nguyên restaurant has the decor up to theme with an urn and straws in the corner, and a painting of a highlander couple dressed in their most comfortable attire, a wrap from the waist down, by the fire. (This blog is rated G so I’m not gonna upload a picture of the painting.)

          The menu, though, isn’t particularly highlandish. At first glance it is similar to most other Vietnamese restaurants, and diners here also order the similar things they always order: hot pots and noodle soups. But if we’re to say that Lemon Grass has more single-portion dishes (the way we always do at American restaurants) and Thảo Tiên‘s focus is Mekong Delta noodle soups, then Cao Nguyên is the place to go for family meals. Most dishes are for sharing among 4-6 people, and to eat with rice.

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