On Food: A mini food-travel-ogue blog

Let's face it folks, this is a post that is long overdue. It's also a subject that's near and dear to my heart, so get ready for a long ride...


Thailand- The food is simply amazing overall. Pretty much impossible to go wrong. In general, the less atmospheric the environment, the better (and cheaper!) the food. Laura and I enjoyed several delicious meals from little stalls and thus when I went back to Bangkok (for less than 24 hours) I ate exclusively in said institutions of culinary art. Thai food is famous in the US for Pad Thai and its curries (which are indeed delicious), but other local specialties include spicy salads such as Spicy green papaya salad, spicy mango salad etc. I had been subtly warned that while all Thai food is relatively spicy, the salads are what you really need to watch out for. This same informant, however, also told me that I needed to make sure to try the Spicy Green Papaya Salad, despite my STRONG papaya aversion. It then follows that on one of our first nights, at Cabbages and Condoms a restaurant full almost exclusively of tourists, we ordered said salad. Laura turned about 12 shades of red at one point and was down for the count for about 10 minutes. Sad times. I thought it was pretty delcious (I also managed not to eat whatever offending item) and tried a spicy mango salad when back in Bangkok alone, to even greater success.

Cambodia: A surprise winner! The food there was honestly great. We went in with low expectations (about everything really) and they really succeeded. The fried yellow noodles with vegetables and the noodle soups that were sold in stalls everywhere (Ladyyyy one dolla...) were delicious. The lemongrass in the soup added a certain je ne sais quoi. We also enjoyed some high quality Pad Thai and mystery make-your-own noodle soup curry something dish in Phnom Penh for next to nothing that I remember as excuistely tasty.

Vietnam- A country of highs and lows, in general. I had high expectations for food in Vietnam and while some of the food was very good, there were some definite lows as well. The Pho (the Soup that Built a Nation) was generally good, however the places that catered to tourists were definitely NOT. The "tourist food" that we were constantly served on our tours was generally bland and unappetizing (and sometimes downright bad). We also had a few experiences of just being served very bland food in random restaurants, probably because we were tourists. I missed the curries. On a more upbeat note, our lunch of Vietnamese rice crepes in HCMC was very good and fun (although it was also probably what got us slightly sick).

Laos- Ginger tea! Pumpkin soup! Crepes. Food heaven? After a bit of a downer at the end of Vietnam, Laos was refreshing in more ways than one. Our first meal, at a place called, aptly enough, TumTum Bamboo, was delicious (if pricey). We sampled the local specialty fish laap (a sort of spicy cold salad), had a nice curry (hurray, back to the land of curries) and each had ginger tea and a soup. I began a new love affair with both ginger tea (as I know I've mentioned) and pumpkin soup after this experience. Seeing both on every menu combined with my somewhat under-the-weather state meant that I became perhaps Luang Prabang's foremost ginger tea and pumpkin soup connoisseur. It was kind of amazing, actually, how different both managed to taste at each place. That is, the ginger tea was always ginger-y and the pumpkin soup always orange and pumpkin flavored, but a definite case of "Same Same, but Different" was at work. Sometimes there was much more curry, sometimes, very coco nutty. At TumTum (where we went back a second time) the soup came FULL of vegetables, as well as some curious "indedibles." That is, Laura and I decided after some unsavory experiences, that not everything that came in the soup was meant to be consumed (ie huge stalks of lemongrass and huge hunks of ginger). I was also lucky enough to be taken out to a dinner of traditional Laotian food at a tasty little restaurant by Hilda and Rebecca that featured dipping little balls of sticky rice that you rolled in your hands into various dips and making little lettuce wraps.

Indonesia:
Same Same, but Different (yet another case in which this ingenious phrase perfectly encompasses the situation)

Makanan (as it's called here, makan being "to eat" and "makanan" food...didn't know you were going to get Indonesian 101, did you?) is generally based around nasi (rice). shock of the century. My favorite is when I get asked if I've ever eaten rice before, as if it's some exotic dish in the US just because we don't eat it for 3 meals a day... Anywho, so far the food is fine, though I'm not blown away. There is once more a lack of curries, though the predominating cooking style of goreng (fried) so popular elsewhere in SE Asia is no less popular here. I had a very good salad thing today called gado-gado, but the jury is out until I learn enough words to actually know what I'm ordering on a menu...

A final thought:
No one uses chopsticks here. Oddly enough, I find myself missing chopsticks. I got so used to using them the past month that I now find it bizarre to be expected to use a fork and spoon (knives as a table cutlery item do not appear to exist in SE Asia) when eating rice or fried noodles. So much for my cultivation of super awesome chopstick skills.