Today I had banh mi (spelled here without accents) for breakfast, a Vietnamese sandwich that is one of the few French customs the people here decided was palatable enough to adopt and adapt, along with strong, dark coffee (which is often served with sweet condensed milk on ice, way better than those thick, sugary Starbucks drinks! But just as gruesomely bad for you). For more on banh mi and the system justification theory, read this review of Kim's Cafe in Portland, Maine by a political theorist/food critic gone amok.
Okay, truth be told, banh mi is a whole lot of bread with not so many ingredients inside. (If you order it without meat. But I found a stand that sells one with cheese, veg, pickle and chili for about 60 cents.) Even better than banh mi is this dish below. (Warning: glistening sliminess ahead.) The woman with the food stand at the end of my alley makes these rice patties and cakes that she then serves with this sauce pictured here (I'm going to research this in greater depth this weekend. I know there's chili and green onion in there.) Although the rice patties are fairly bland, she slightly sweetens the thicker rice cake with coconut milk, and then sprinkles peanuts over the whole kit and caboodle. An Australian woman I met tonight who was sitting and eating here says she has only ordered meals from this one spot since arriving in Ho Chi Minh two days ago. And then she admitted she only travels to eat, which sounds reasonable, otherwise there is little reward for such a hugely tiresome endeavor.
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