Vietnam - Eating With Courage

Vietnamese are eaters with passion and cooks with boldness. Vietnamese cuisine can satisfy the stomach and can also be cravings of food lovers for something different and adventurous.

In HCM City, there are several barbecue restaurants, where meat is being nicely roasted and mouthwatering aroma can be smelled from distance away. All you have to do is to put on your napkin and get ready for the surprises in your meal. Apart from the usual meat choices, they have got some rather unusual alternatives for diners to pick—ranging from rats, sparrows and crocodiles to scorpions and crickets, to name just a few.

“I would not eat meat that I can’t recognize,” says Hugh Marsh, a 65-year-old Australian who has lived in the city for nearly three years. When everything is marinated and roasted, and all of the dishes come with a nearly flamboyant reddish color, pork or sparrows, or beef or rat steaks, one can barely tell the difference, Marsh argues. But he adds that when some of his friends were visiting this country, they would purposely look for these exotic dishes. “Although fear challenges tourists, eating exotic meat is for experience and fun,” Marsh says.

A waiter at one of the barbecue restaurants we visited to write this article claimed that some foreign tourists have frequented his place for these exotic dishes. However, the American visitor Alexis Williams, 21, refuses to put exotic meat in her month. “I dare not try it. I don’t know where the meat is from.” Williams says when she was planning to come to the city, she heard from her friends that rat cuisines are popular in this country.

Not a meat lover? Then you may as well want to snack on an egg instead. At the corner of De Tham and Bui Vien streets in HCM City’s backpackers’ quarter in District 1, you can see eaters, local and expatriate alike, sitting on a low wooden stool to have their ht vt ln—the hard-boiled fertilized duck egg. Once being cracked open, the egg will show the unusually yellowish embryo with a multitude of visible veins. The soul of this snack however is a duck embryo which has not fully developed.

Some expatriates may not be interested in trying on this commonly seen snack. Maggie Lenning, 23, who is from England, is one of them. Lenning says she dares not see anyone having this food, let alone eating it. However, John Munis—Lenning’s compatriot—says that he likes this snack. “It tastes better than it looks,” Munis affirms.
This unique snack may not be a hit among all foreign tourists, but it makes no harm to its height of local popularity in Vietnam and also in many other Southeast Asian countries. The ways different people enjoy the treat would vary slightly from one culture to another. In Vietnam, these eggs would be served with lemon, and salt and pepper. Local people believe the snack is high in protein and can boost energy for the day.

In several cases, a bottle of wine with a snake positioned up straight and biting on a scorpion between its fangs can serve as well a unique souvenir for friends back home. Jo Keller, a German tourist in his 40s, has bought several bottles of snake wine to add traces of exotic locations to his hometown. “But I would not drink it,” said Keller.

According to a souvenir shop owner, the wine is made in rural Vietnam and is different from normal liquor as it can be a medicinal brandy and can bring invigorating effects. The wine is a traditional drink which is commonly seen in rural Chinese villages and many other Asian countries. In preparation of the liquor, different animals and their intestines are soaked in alcohol. Some foreigners who have tasted the wine say that it tastes somewhat like whisky with rotten scales.

When you are here in Vietnam, be adventurous on foods! Don’t get frightened by how the dishes may look like. Instead, try out cuisines that are beyond your expectations. If you’re courageous enough, these dishes may enrich your experiences in Vietnam.

SAIGON TIMES 
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