Yummy Food Experiences

Since we left Santa Barbara so many ages ago there has been many wonderful (beautiful as an Aussie would say) taste treats pass between my lips.

It started out in Fiji where we had a gourmet cook from down under preparing all of our meals, and they were excellent. When you surf as you can imagine you work up a pretty good appetite and sometimes at camps the food can be not very good. David (the chef in Fiji) had fresh fish everyday, more than he could use and he prepared it in many delicious ways. My favorite however was the sashimi we had every night before dinner. Wow was it good!!! I made somewhat of a pig of myself eating it, but then everyone else did too. The dinners were very social affairs as well and you could choose who you wanted to sit with and get to know a bit better. We have not had socializing like that here in Oz or when we were on the road. It will be good to get back to friends (especially my girlfriends!!! I miss you all.)

I would not really recommend Australia for it’s outstanding cuisine, although we have had a couple excellent batches of Fish and Chips, usually in some way out of the way place like Iluka. Can’t forget those mushy peas though can we?! I do like the biscuits they have for their teatime, they aren’t quite as sweet as a cookie, and they have some really good gingersnaps. The only other good food in Australia was i loved their potatoes, they called them Brushed Potatoes. they had red soil all over them when you bought them in the market so you had to clean them well when you got home. Boy they made wonderful baked potatoes, we had them for dinner many nights!

We had some really good meals in Thailand one of the best was at a funky little roadside stand when we were out touring the countryside. Even a meal in a good restaurant is fairly cheap in Bangkok, not even half what you would pay in SB. Rena introduced me to fried seaweed as a snack, it comes like a small bag like chips and has some hot pepper on it. It is so good I can eat a whole bag (Rena says it gets soggy in the humidity and we wouldn’t want that to happen!)

I loved the sidewalk vendors in Bangkok you could live off what they sell (I think Rena did for the year she was there). Fruit (all of it I had was sweeter and more flavorful than what we have in the States), Thai tea, steamed rice in lotus leaves or banana leaves, orange juice from heaven (hard to believe the oranges they use are green, I mean totally green not just sort of green!), green papaya (I always thought it was unripe papaya but it’s not, just another variety), grilled corn (they cut it off the cob and give it to you in a bag), green mango salad, and folks I have to admit I passed on the bug stand (they were selling many different kinds of “roasted” bugs).

The vendors were cheap too, a slice of watermelon deftly cut from the rind and sliced into bite sized pieces and put in a plastic bag (complete with bamboo skewer so you could eat it as you walked) was 20 baht (that is about .75$). You could get any fruit for that price, I think a whole mango cut and put in a bag was 30 baht ($1.00), in fact not many things went for more than that. One thing I did not buy from a sidewalk vendor was any meat. In fact I ate very little meat when we were in Bangkok or Vietnam, it was way to hot to eat a lot of heavy food.

Thias are very meticulous and clean and I had no problem buying off the street, but I was a bit more cautious in Viet Nam, plus sidewalk vendors were not so prevalent in Hanoi, although you saw a lot of them along the roadsides as you got out of the city.

We had some excellent meals in Hanoi that were recommended by Luxe Guides, which we used for both Hanoi and Bangkok. If you are traveling to Southeast Asia check them out at www.Luxecityguides.com they are from the UK, but they are just starting to be sold at Border’s in the States. Their newest Guide is for New York, and they have some for Europe (Rome and Paris for sure and I’m not sure what else. He Guides are small and handy and not overwhelming. Every suggestion for eating and shopping we tried but one was spot on. I urge you to check them out if you are going to a new city. And they are so much fun to read!

In Hanoi we found (at the recommendation of our Luxe Guide) a restaurant called Club Opera that was so yummy we ate there 3 times. They had the loveliest blue and white hand painted china I thought about stealing some it was so nice, but didn’t, and very formally set tables, but not at all stuffy. One of my favorites hor’dourves was their small steamed rice pancakes with toasted shrimp sprinkled on top (we had them every time we went they were so yummy). They had wonderful fried tofu (so creamy) and some fried shrimp toasts that were to die for. I also had a wonderful fresh bamboo shoot and shrimp salad with mango that I loved. I know Greg had some really good fish there but you would have to get details from him. The service was excellent and dinner was around $40-50 this included beers and wines, appetizers, main dishes and dessert (and fresh lime water for me ☺, my drink of choice in SEA!

The last night we were in Hanoi we decided to try someplace new and went to Club 51 which was right down the street from Club Opera (which of course was right down from The Opera House) in a big and well-kept old mansion. We went up to the top floor (there were two floors) and were seated in a very nicely decorated large room furnished in couched and large lounging chairs with the lighting being furnished by these big and beautiful silk lamps hanging from the ceiling.

I had one of my favorite dishes of the trip that night, it was an appetizer and it was fresh young bamboo shoots with shrimp and pork. It was in a lovely sauce and was served with small round “rice crackers”…. ohhhh it was so good!!! I can’t even remember what else we had that night, but it was a lovely dinner. It was close enough that we could walk home via the Lake with all the nightlights reflecting off the water.

All of the hotels we stayed in have elaborate buffets for breakfast, none of this awful coffee and a dry bagel or horrid sweet roll jazz for them like in the States! Another dish I came to really like was the noodle soup the Vietnamese have for breakfast. They cook up some kind of meat broth that they have on a burner at the buffet. Beside it they have cold noodles, which they heat up in the broth and then a host of other choices to be added to the basic noodle soup. My additions usually included cilantro, green onions, red HOT chilie peppers (watch out!!), and pieces of lime to squeeze into the soup. I never went for the meats they offered. Quyet said that was what he always had for breakfast; I might start that habit at home as I do not like “normal” breakfast stuff.

A new tea I discovered in Viet Nam was lotus tea. Apparently they take tea and put it in the flower of the lotus plant (they are about 6-8” when opened) when they are open during the day. The flower closes for the night and I guess they collect it some time later after it has absorbed the sweet scent of the lotus flower. It is very nice.

My other new favorite which I will probably never have outside of Northern Viet Nam, was bamboo steamed sticky rice. I have already talked about it in an earlier post so I won’t go into details again, just lament I do not have some to munch on right now. It is the simple things in life that are good.