Vietnamese Food

Nam-Son is a restaurant near my parents' home that serves Vietnamese food. It used to be run by someone named Avina and her mother. Their food was above average but not something that qualified it for repeat visits. Due to health-related problems, Avina and her mother sold the place to a new set of owners. And their food is delicious.

Whenever I approach the restaurant, I'm always struck by how unassuming the front is. It is located in a small plaza where the main attractions are a Fry's supermarket and a Bank of America. If I didn't bother to glance over that corner of the plaza three years ago, I would've easily missed it. On this day, I walked in and noticed that the place is a little darker but full of brilliant colors: blood-red tablecloths that remind me of Chinese New Year's; bleach white tiled walls covered with large photographs of Vietnamese sub sandwiches, each one a burst of orange carrots, green spinach, and white mung bean sprouts.

There was one other customer who was enjoying a bowl of pho, something a poet once called the soul of the Vietnamese. He had bare sprigs of Thai basil, cilantro, mung bean sprouts, and lime wedges spread across his entire table.

I sat down and looked over the menu. It hadn't changed with the new owners. I ordered some comfort food: spring rolls, a beef curry stew that came with a loaf of French bread, and a honeydew boba. Boba is a cold tapioca and tea drink that supposedly originated on the streets of Taiwan and spread like influenza among East Asian countries. In the decade since its invention, the flavors of boba have moved beyond sweetened tea to include guava, jackfruit, lychee, cantaloupe, coffee, and, one of my favorite fruits, honeydew melon.

The spring rolls were tight; their contents remained within the diaphanous rice wrapper with every bite. The fresh mint leaves, dried pork, and snappy rice noodles melded with the fish sauce into a blend of contrasting flavors and textures. As I finish my last bite, the waiter arrived with my bowl of beef curry stew and a loaf of French bread. Saliva flooded my mouth. The bread had a crisp and chewy crust; the crumb was tender and blinded me with its steam. The bowl held a pool of brilliant, earthy orange liquid, a hue that reminded me of the embroidered ceremonial robe of the Qianlong emperor, and dotted with slivers of tender beef and golden chunks of deep-fried potatoes. I had to pace myself with sips of the honeydew boba--itself a mildly sweet slush punctuated with big balls of black tapioca--or I would've burned my tongue.

As with all good things in this world, my meal came to its natural conclusion. I paid my bill and left Nam-Son knowing that that drab-looking restaurant still held many treasures waiting to be rediscovered.

Tags: food

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United States of Arugula review

David Kamp of The ____ Snob's Dictionary's fame (notably Rock Snob's and recently Food Snob's) presents a journalistic account of America's contemporary food pedigree in The United States of Arugula. It follows the current tide of food books that goes beyond actual food and recipes to look at the people involved. Kamp proposes a food pantheon comprising three figures who have shaped today's food culture: Julia Child, James Beard, and Craig Claiborne. Child showed America in her idiosyncratic manner that French cuisine need not be inaccessible to the home cook. She also paved the way--for better or worse--for TV chefs and the idea of the chef as a TV personality (think Food Network's Emeril Lagasse or Rachael Ray, both industries unto themselves). Beard was a believer in American cuisine and mentored many of today's notable chefs. Claiborne was a pioneer in food journalism at the New York Times who held restaurants to greater standards and introduced Americans to ethnic fare.

Kamp profiles other well-known and obscure figures who have played roles in altering how Americans view, treat, and demand their food. These profiles are usually peppered with colorful anecdotes, juicy gossip, and contentious quotes. Rivalries, affairs, and arguments between the different players are laid bare with Kamp offering those involved (and still alive) the opportunity to respond. Oftentimes, I felt as if I were reading a celebrity magazine in between the layered narratives of recent food history. Kamp often inserts his own take on certain figures and institutions (he doesn't hold back his exasperation with the Beard Foundation) without great detrimental effect on the narratives. I found it interesting that he concludes the book by noting the major issues confronting various food camps and the entire food industry and culture, e.g. organic production, the viable sustainability of gourmet cuisine and consumption. The United States of Arugula is an engrossing look at how America's cuisine reached its current gourmet status.

Next on the "To Read" list:

• The Omnivore's Dilemma & the follow-up In Defense of Food, both by Michael Pollan
• Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes

Today's Supplements:

• Ratatouille because it's one of the best movies of 2007 and a tasty dish.
• Paprika for both the spice and the movie directed by Satoshi Kon.

Mongolian Death Worm

Today I finished Spook Country by William Gibson. This is the second book I've read of his, after Pattern Recognition. (I'll have to read Neuromancer at some point.) As in Pattern Recognition, his writing style here is sparse and honed down to the essentials, reminiscent of noir and hard-boiled detective stories. I find Gibson's fascination with objects and their cultural signification to be very interesting, especially since one of the main "characters" of the story was locative artwork, a form of art that, as presented in the story, connects and reformulates our sense of location, locational history, the physical, and the virtual. (Is this a prominent feature in his earlier books as well?) Full of astute observations about the world today, right now, and of the all-too-recent past, Spook Country is a great successor to Pattern Recognition.