Flavor Boulevard

My junior year of high school was my first year ever in America, and I was still learning the rope of living here, high school dance among other things. A friend invited me to Homecoming. For the pre-dance dinner, he talked about going to a Vietnamese restaurant named Mai in Houston. I didn’t know exactly where it was or what it was (this was 2002, Google Maps and Yelp didn’t exist), but I thought that was considerate of him. In the end, we went to a steakhouse instead, I thought it was because Mai was a bit too far away, and I was left wondering what Mai was like.

A few years later, my host parents mentioned Mai again in passing conversation, and suggested we went together sometime. The place, dated back to 1978, is known as the very first Vietnamese restaurant in Houston, and pretty much every Houstonian knows at least its name. My parents and I were interested, but again, days passed and we forgot. One day in early 2010, news came that the restaurant had been destroyed by a fire. We sighed, somewhat regretful.

Luckily, it reopened. I forget how and when we came to know of its re-opening, but this summer, we decided that as Houstonians, it’s about time we should check this off the list.

As usual, my mom told me to order anything I want, and I did. But I overdid myself, and we struggled to finish a few plates fast enough to have room on the table for the next plate. It was a marathon. The portion was dinosaur-mongous. The three of us packed half of the food home.

APPETIZERS:

Fried shrimp with garlic butter sauce

This plate was the first to be move out of the way. Guess what I poured on my dress? The garlic butter sauce. I smelled “good” for the rest of the day.

Chao long – rice porridge with “dau chao quay” (youtiao) and pork offals.

Yes, this is an appetizer, although the bowl can probably fit me in it.

ENTREES:

Breaded fried catfish steaks – Crunchy and not too oily, but I wish they were not breaded and simply pan fried.

Canh chua – sour soup with fish, tomato, pineapple, okra and celery. So refreshing for the summer!

Banh hoi – thin rice noodle mesh with lemongrass grilled beef

This one is to be wrapped in rice paper, which my mom artfully put on her bowl like a mini table cloth (the first picture).

DESSERTS:

Green tea ice cream

Banana tapioca pudding

One of those extremely common desserts in Vietnam that you never see in American Vietnamese restaurants. This one is good (but I like my version better ^_^).

Mai’s menu has a lot of stuff, but nothing strayed from the usuals that you would see at any Vietnamese restaurant in town. Although few things jump out at me, anything that we ordered tastes exactly how we want them to. They make traditional Vietnamese food in the honest, straightforward traditional manner, with abundance to boost, which is also characteristic of Vietnamese food. Their home-styled comfort delivered, and we wouldn’t ask for anything better.

Mai’s Restaurant is at 3403 Milam Street, Houston, TX 77002 – (713) 520-5300

– Guest post by Mom, loosely translated by me –

There are mornings, even on weekends, when I wake up feeling like a stone (Mai: she means it figuratively, the supermodel BMI runs in our family 😉) and still have to get out of bed because of the mountain of work waiting. Not work at work, but work around the house. Laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, tidying the bedrooms, grocery, and especially cooking even when I have no appetite. When those mornings happen, I think of something easy to make and easy to eat. Naturally, porridge comes to mind. My daughter doesn’t like porridge, but when she’s not home I can prepare it for her dad and me for lunch and maybe dinner, too. I like porridge: mung bean porridge, fish porridge, chicken porridge, pork porridge… and beef porridge for today.

Beef Porridge (serving 3)
– 1 cup cooked rice
– 2 lb pork bone
– 1 lb ground beef
– 8 oz champignon mushroom
– 1/2 sweet onion, minced
– 1 tbs minced garlic
– salt and sugar to taste (e.g., 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar)
– a pinch of ground black pepper
– green onion and coriander
– 3 eggs

Simmer the pork bones to make stock, remove all the white floating foam. Use cooked rice instead of uncooked rice so that the porridge is soft but the grains don’t disintegrate, and the bottom layer doesn’t get sticky and burnt.
Season the beef with garlic, onion, salt, sugar and black pepper. Scoop spoonfuls of meat into the boiling stock. When the stock boils again, add rice. Simmer on low heat for 30 minutes. Do NOT stir. Once the porridge becomes really mushy, add mushroom. In a bowl, whisk up the eggs with chopsticks and dribble it into the boiling stock. Re-season if necessary before turning off the heat.
Garnish with green onion and coriander. Serve hot.

Beef porridge is easy to make (Mai: in my book anything with more than 3 ingredients ain’t no breezy game), not elaborate but healthy for the old and young, strong and sick. I feel lighter after I eat a bowl. How can our mind weigh down anymore when our body is elevated by something so hearty and warm?

Rice porridge was my enemy.

In elementary years, I got a fever about once every month. Aside from feeling tired and having weird dreams when the fever got high, I didn’t really mind that, but my mom did. She was so worried she wouldn’t sleep for days, not until my temperature went back to normal. And she made sure that I ate my rice porridge. She made rice porridge with ground pork and rice porridge with fish, she added vegetable, she seasoned it perfectly, and I still hated every spoon of it. I hated the texture of rice porridge: mushy and textureless. I hated both thick porridge and watery porridge(*). Every porridge meal was a battle between Mom and me, and I always lost, which deepened my aversion to porridge even more. But there were happy days when I actually liked my fever porridge and didn’t need my mom to prod: it was mung bean porridge on those days.

Actually, there’s rice in mung bean porridge, too, but the mung bean skin makes the porridge all nuttier and better. Then it’s a sweet porridge (just rice, mung bean and sugar, no meat), so that’s doubly better. Health-wise, mung bean is a cooling food(*), which would help alleviating the fever and digesting. Little Mom says that the Central Vietnamese eat mung bean porridge with cá kho tiêu (small caramelized pepper braised fish) instead of sugar, I can see that being tasty, and I can imagine substituting the fish with myulchi bokkum (멸치 볶음, dried fried anchovies) for availability. But I’ve found another way to heighten the mung bean porridge experience while keeping it vegan:

I dip toasted rice cracker into the porridge. We had leftover rice crackers from a lunch of rice cracker and pork rolls. There I was sitting, slurping and chewing my porridge, and staring at the stack of crackers, and it just came. Now you get crunchy, airy, nutty, sweet, sesame-y, toasty, liquidy, all in one bite. 😉

(*) These days I can tolerate watery porridge, but I still avoid the thick kind.
(**) I wrote a brief section on the cooling vs. heating effect of food in the post Benefits of Tea.

The Recipe: Childhood Love Mung Bean Porridge (8 servings)

— 250 g mung bean (halved but not shelled)
— 1/2 cup rice
— 1.2 l (42 fl oz) water (less water for thicker porridge)
— 1 can coconut milk
— sugar (as much as you want)
— toasted sesame rice cracker (as much as you want)
Soak the mung bean overnight to soften it. In a pot, cook rice, mung bean and water until the grains turn mushy. Add coconut milk and bring it to a boil. Serve warm with toasted rice crackers.