HANOI, VIETNAM – Another tasty stir-fried chicken lunch today reminded me that Vietnamese cooks let nothing go to waste; they use every part of the bird… including the lips.
What? You didn’t know chickens have lips?
To be honest, neither did I, but I’m sure that must be what I spent a full minute-and-a-half trying to chew before I admitted defeat and spit it into my napkin. On taking a closer look at the gristly misshapen hunk, I couldn’t make a positive identification, but for all I know, it might have been a pair of chicken lips.
To the cook’s credit, the sauce the bird was cooked in was absolutely delicious, flavorful and seasoned just right, slightly sweet with just the right amount of heat. That’s why I kept chewing for so long; it just tasted so darn good.
We’ve found food in Vietnam to be consistently tasty. Some meals are better than others of course, but overall the food has been really delicious.
And while we’re on the subject of food…
If you like noodles, Hanoi is noodle Heaven
If you like noodles, Hanoi is noodle Heaven. There are gobs of white rice vermicelli noodles, often served cold with a sweet vinaigrette in Bun Cha; fettuccine-shaped rice noodles in steaming bowls of Pho; yakisoba-type wheat noodles fried with chicken, beef or pork; transparent “glass” noodles made from mung bean or other starch and served in a variety of soups; and probably several more kinds of noodle derivatives I haven’t even seen yet.
One of the biggest challenges for me has been eating noodles with chopsticks. With a stir-fried dish I can manage pretty well, but when the noodles are swimming in a bowl of soup I have a hard time getting the slippery strands from the bowl to my mouth.
Vietnamese chicken noodle soup
The most successful strategy so far has been to hold the bowl close to my face, grab a cluster of noodles with my chopsticks, slurp them off the sticks and cut off the excess with my teeth, letting the ends fall back into the bowl. Fortunately, a container of napkins is usually close by; I end up blotting my chin (and sometimes my shirt) a lot.
And luckily for me, a bowl of soup also comes with a spoon, a familiar eating utensil I’ve been using since I was a child.
Have you found this to be a problem too?
I heard the food in Vietnam is amazing. Though not sure about those lips. Everything else sounds delightful.
Funny and entertaining. Makes me look forward to trying the food in Vietnam. We are in Colombia so we do not have to deal with chopsticks just yet.
This is hilarious! Thanks John for helping Me with my slippery noodle/chopsticks dilemma! Looking forward to more commentary…