Asian food is a really big category, but I especially love Vietnamese food. My favorite dish is hot and sour fish soup. It’s very light and fresh but with bold flavors. The soup has a clear broth and it’s made up of fresh veggies and fruits like celery, tomato, bean sprouts, and chunks of pineapple. The restaurant often brings you a little dish of fish sauce and soy sauce with sliced thai peppers in it, which is savory and spicy. Take the pieces of fish out of the broth and dip it in the sauce, eat everything with white rice on the side… yum.
I think this is also a Chinese dish, but head-on shrimp fried with salt, pepper, and scallions are delicious. When you get shrimp at an American grocery store they look tiny, because the head is basically the same size as the body. So you’re only getting ½ a shrimp. You don’t have to eat the whole head, because it’s fattening, but this meat is a lot more moist and rich than the rest of the shrimp. There are a lot of ways to cook them, but this way is my favorite.
Bahn beo Hue are little soft round rice cakes with savory toppings like chopped shrimp, scallions, and fish sauce. It would actually take me forever to list all my favorite Vietnamese foods, but it’s really worth investigating. Vietnamese food can also be lighter and more delicate than many types of Asian food because of the French influence in the cuisine. You’ve probably already had Pho, the national dish, and Vietnamese iced coffee is stronger and richer than American coffee. It’s the only coffee with enough caffeine to give me the shakes.
And you’ve got to love Korean barbecue (bulgogi.) It’s basically marinated seared beef, but that doesn’t do the satisfying savoriness of this dish justice. Kimchi, spicy cabbage, makes a great contrast to it because the cabbage is crunchy, sour and spicy while the beef is hot, meaty and fatty. It often comes with a ton of tiny thoughtful side dishes.