I am excited for breakfast because I woke up at 3am and have been hungry since! We headed down to breakfast around 630am and there were already a handful of tables filled.
My mom and I immediately went to the noodle station and ordered 2 bowls of pho; one of them plain please (as in no bean sprouts, no onions, no greens). They seemed so surprised and I explained I like my pho plain. They said that my parents must not have taught me as a child. I said “no, they did, but I just didn’t like it.” They said, “you must have not listened to your parents a lot growing up then.” LOl whatever, I don’t care what people think!
The pho was so delicious… it was so good I got another bowl.. and then another bowl.. so 3 bowls total! It was pho tai(beef flank).
Their noodle station also has an egg and omelette station! Omg I love omelettes but I want to stuff myself with pho only!
I also noticed that half of the hot foods and 1 of the desserts changed from yesterday so I also got a small plate of little bites of things I wanted to just taste:
Spaghetti bolognese. Surprisingly good and I am also partial to bolognese. If there weren’t so many other Vietnamese foods I wanted to stuff myself would, I would have gotten a whole plate of this.
Grilled pork with honey. This looked better than it tasted but still tender and tasty.
Chicken ragout. This was surprisingly very tender and flavorful. I liked this! And I love cooked, soft carrots.
Banh uot (steamed rice cake with Vietnamese ham). My mom thought it was good, especially with the fish sauce dip. I love the gio as an option to go with it. The banh uot was very thin.
One of the new desserts they swapped in were the mini cream puffs. It brought back nostalgia of when my parents used to buy me cream puffs at Banh Mi Che Cali. These were good because they were small with a generous amount of custard cream so the ratio was plentiful! I love custard cream!
Then we took a taxi to meet up at her sisters house so that the 4 of us can be bougie and take a taxi for a day trip to Vung Tau, which is in the countryside to visit one of their brothers. It was a 3hr drive one way and Bac Huong sweet talked the taxi driver into taking us back and giving us a discount. It turned out to be 2.5m VND for round trip and treating him to lunch before the drive back. We stayed at Bac Huong’s (brother) place for about an hour.
Bac Huong’s wife put the sisters to work while they played some catch up. My mom helped squeeze fresh oranges. Their skin is green there! And naturally mildly sweet and not a big sour. I had two cups of it.
We had half a small bowl of white rice with braised beef, stir fried Vietnamese ham with sausages, freshly sliced cucumbers and tomato-egg soup. This is as homemade as it gets in the country side! Everything was good, maybe even on a slightly saltier side for me because I am now used to my mom’s bland cooking.
After an hour, we went back to our taxi driver who waited for us right outside. On the way back he picked this restaurant to eat lunch at. It was fairly big and on the corner of a local highway street. There are tables and chairs underneath a huge tarp tent.
They serve mostly banh canh and banh khot. Banh canh are thick Vietnamese rice noodle soup and banh khot are savory mini pancakes with shrimp.
With each order of banh canh, we get a coffee or tea for free. I picked cafe sua da of course but look at the ratio of coffee to ice!!! I mean, it’s traditional to have way more ice so that the super condensed coffee can get diluted a little and become perfect, but this is a bit extreme. Oh well, it’s free and it’s still good.
The banh khot we’re small and crispy, not too thick. They were also served with lettuce and a variety of greens and rice paper to roll them up and eat like an egg roll. However, I’m used to the yellow ones growing up when my mom also mixes turmeric in the dough mixture. I think I like my mom’s more. These weren’t that tasty.
My mom and I shared a bowl of banh canh cha ca because we were both still full from eating at Bac Huong’s house. The bowl was pretty big so I am glad we did. Cha ca is like Vietnamese ham but made with mashed up fish. I actually love eating this at home. They are like round little gio. The broth is kind of bland but the cha ca was more salty so it made up for it.
Then we did our 3hr drive back to the city where we rested for a bit back in our hotel and freshened up.
Conveniently right outside of our hotel is a hot vit lon lady. We saw her set up our first night and even last night. We told ourselves we must get it one of these nights because 1) we love hot vit lon and 2) it’s literally right outside. How much more convenient can it get?
It is around 10k VND per egg, which calculates to less than 50 cents per egg. At first we got 2 each but because it’s supposed to rain in an hour, my mom felt bad she might get rained out so she bought us each another one to support her. Wow, never seen my mom be so willing to spend money (and now it’s to help the economy too).
She provides a small plate of rau ram, which is a green herbal leaf and some salt/pepper. The way to eat it is to place an egg (small side down) on one of the cute egg holders and crack the bigger end with a small spoon. Peel the cracked shells off to create a crater hole, slurp on some delicious amniotic fluid and scoop away! Dip your scooped piece onto some salt/pepper and eat away!
The hot vit lon was good!! It was hot but not too hot. My mom and I both liked it. Usually 2 eggs is enough to fill me plenty, but since I ate 3, I am super full now.
Then we literally walked up the stairs back into our hotel. I wish there were more vendors right outside our hotel! it is madly convenient!
