RESTAURANT REVIEWS: Amphone

Fish with Herbs Wrapped in a Banana Leaf

Bamboo Shoots Stuffed with Pork

I went to Amphone on my last night in Vientiane because I wanted to try a specific dish which my guidebook had said that Amphone did well.  Instead, I got sidetracked by a few other items on the menu.  I went for the steamed fish with herbs wrapped in a banana leaf and the pork stuffed in bamboo shoots.

Let me preface this with the food was, indeed, delicious.  It’s just that, well, when it came out, the presentation didn’t quite match what I was expecting based on the menu description.  For instance, if the menu says the fish is wrapped in a banana leaf, I kind of expect it to be, y’know, wrapped in a banana leaf.  But maybe Amphone figured a piece of fish wrapped in a banana leaf was too difficult to make look presentable on a plate or maybe they figured that their guests would find opening up a banana leaf parcel at the table too cumbersome.  Or maybe it never was wrapped in a banana leaf.  I don’t know.

It was a similar story with the pork stuffed in bamboo shoots.  To be fair, I’m not sure what exactly a bamboo shoot looks like.  I mean, I know what it looks like in food normally, but I don’t know if those are smaller strips cut up from a bigger piece.  When I read the description for this dish on the menu, I was envisioning a hollow type of bamboo shoot structure with pork stuffed inside.  But what actually came out basically looked a lot like laap, but with bamboo shoots mixed in it.

BUT it was all delicious.  It all ends up in the same place, anyway, no matter how it is presented on your plate, right?  I say give Amphone a try.  You will probably find it delicious and the food will be plated well, but don’t be surprised if, with regards to appearance, your expectations and your reality turn out to be quite different.

Amphone Street View

Table for one on a rainy night

Lao Omelette

When I finally arrived back in Vientiane from my tiny little adventure around Northern Laos, I was walking down the same street where I had seen the cute little vendor making Lao pancakes, and lo and behold, there she was, this time making an omelette.  Her omelette consisted of pouring a runny egg batter into a hot frying pan.  Then, she would sprinkle a generous handful of bean sprouts in the centre, and then a few generous spoonfuls of laap, and she would top it all off with a generous handful of bamboo shoots.  Then she folded it all up and folded it into a banana leaf.  The whole thing was served with a humungous bag of all kinds of leaves and herbs, as well as some small baggies of peanuts, a sweet hot chili mixture and a kind of vinegary mixture.

As I’ve discovered in Laos, whenever food is served with a massive plate of leaves, it is because you are meant to wrap your food in the leaves and eat it that way.  This turned out to work perfectly for me, as this vendor only served her food to go, and I was too shy to ask at my guesthouse whether I could borrow a spoon, so I set upon breaking apart and scooping up chunks of my Lao omelette with the various types of leaf in the bag.

Oh. Em. Gee!  It was super delicious!  A perfect second last meal in Laos!

Crocodile Pate

Le Banneton, in addition to making pastries and sandwiches, also makes several types of pate.  The kind of pate which really caught my eye was the crocodile pate.  Yes, I know I’ve mentioned several times before that I really don’t like pate, but there are some instances when you have to set your preferences aside in the interest of food exploration, and I felt like this was one of those instances.

To be completely fair, I think it’s mostly the concept of pate that I don’t like.  Spreadable meat from a jar that keeps for basically forever?  That’s, like, just one step away from Spam, but somehow it’s classy and refined.  It’s also the fact that I really don’t like liver.  My parents owned a meat packing plant when I was young, so I grew up working there, and I’ve handled more than my fair share of liver in my lifetime and, imo, it just has the WORST texture of all meat.  It’s spongy and it’s very bloody.  And it’s slippery.  Who wants to eat an extremely bloody, slippery sponge?  Oh yeah, and then there’s the fact that I am a flexitarian, and as someone who’s PRACtically a vegetarian, foie gras is maybe one of the worst choices to make if you’re going to go on eating meat.  I mean, it’s not just liver; it’s artificially fat liver.

The crocodile pate is made with crocodile meat and duck liver, and it’s seasoned with galangal and pink pepper.  If that is not the epitome of foodie gourmet, I don’t know what is.  (No, seriously, I challenge you to name something more outlandishly foodie than crocodile and duck pate with galangal and pink pepper.)  I also bought a baguette from Le Banneton and sat at one of the outside tables there and ate my pate right there.  And you know what?  It wasn’t too bad.

I have actually eaten crocodile once before at a restaurant in Victoria B.C., and that time, I thought it tasted a bit like chicken.  Again, this time around, if someone had told me that there was chicken in that jar instead of crocodile, I would have believed them.  I tried pretty hard to imagine there was only crocodile in the jar.  I tried sosososo hard to forget there was also duck liver in there.  I think I did a pretty good job of forgetting about it for the period of time that the stuff was in my mouth.  As far as the seasonings, I didn’t taste much of the galangal, but I did taste plenty of the pink pepper, which was alright with me as it helped me further forget about the duck liver.*

All in all, if you are a person who actually likes foie gras, I’d say this one was pretty good.  Even if you don’t like foie gras, this is a great novelty item, and the price was more than right.  At 27,000 kip (about 3.40 USD) per jar, it’s certainly not going to break the bank.  I bought one for me to try, plus three more jars to send to my parents and to my two brothers as a cute little gift from Vientiane.  I mean, just check out how adorbs the jars are!

*Just for fun pepper fact that I’m pretty sure I’m not making up: way way way back when, pepper was originally used as a seasoning to mask the horrible taste of the rotten food that people used to have to eat in olden times.  If you read the Annotated Alice, I’m pretty sure you’ll come across an annotation that tells you that is the real reason the scary cook lady is going nuts putting tons of pepper in the food she’s making.

RESTAURANT REVIEWS: Common Grounds

I’m not really sure what drew me into Common Grounds.  If it’s in the guidebook (I actually think it is), I completely glossed over it as I was reading the food section.  I just happened to pass by it one day and, unlike most of the other bakeries and cafes in Vientiane, I decided to go in and check it out.

Common Grounds has an interesting selection of wraps and pitas, but what really got my attention was their cheesecakes, cupcakes, and cookies.  Common Grounds, you had me at “Caramel Walnut Cheesecake with chocolate crust.”

Unfortunately, my trip to Laos was too short, and I was only able to make two trips to Common Grounds, which means I was only able to sample each of the cheesecakes (which were both delicious, but I would recommend the walnut one).  Other things on their menu which I would have liked to have tried given more time and an emptier stomach are the pumpkin spice cupcake, the passionfruit cupcake, the coconut cupcake, and the turtle cookie (which is a chocolate cookie with a peanut butter centre).

Whereas Le Banneton might appeal to a more European crowd, I could imagine Common Grounds appealing to a more North American crowd, what with their sweet desserts and pitas and wraps with unique fillings.  Yeah, I’d say if you’re ever in Vientiane, you should check out Common Grounds.

Ban Kuan

The various fixins that you’re supposed to put on your ban kuan

The ban kuan before the fixins

With all the fixins

Deliciousness in every bite

So, I think it’s probably evident by now that food is really important to me, and it goes without saying that before I go on a trip, I do a little research about the local foods of the place where i’m going.  I had read about ban kuan and decided it was something I wanted to try.  I had also read about where I could get it in Vientiane and Vang Vieng, but I decided to go ahead and eat this in Vientiane in case I got a little, ummm, preoccupied in Vang Vieng (I did end up getting preoccupied in Vang Vieng, but if you know much about what goes on in Vang Vieng, prolly not how you’re think– minds more in the gutters, people! 😉

Anyway, I had read roughly where to go in Vientiane to find ban kuan from street vendors, and I just kind of assumed that if that was the spot in Vientiane to find ban kuan, then it must be swarming with vendors all selling the same dish.  Ummmm, no.  Finding ban kuan proved to be a mini adventure.  I ended up walking up and down the street, stopping at every vendor, pointing at their food, and asking hopefully, “Ban kuan?” and they’d just smile me and usher me further along the street until I finally stopped at a vendor who said, “Yes, ban kuan.”

This ban kuan was all pre-made and just waiting for people to come along and buy it.  When you buy your ban kuan, you get several little baggies: some deep fried garlic, some sweet hot chili sauce, some vinegar, and a wedge of lime, and you are meant to dump all of this on your ban kuan before you dive into it.  It was certainly delicious, and uhhh, deep fried garlic– why don’t we do more of this in the West??

 

Lao Mojito

We weren’t sure what about these mojitos made them Lao mojitos, so we asked, and the bartender couldn’t really give us a satisfactory answer, either.  We ran with it, though, because it was 2 for 1 happy hour!  Weeeeeeeeeee!*

I’d love to say that even the cats in Laos love Lao mojitos, but I think the truth is this kitty was more interested in our cheese (we’d ordered cheesy fries, too) than in our mojitos.

*Did you notice the switch to the first person plural?  Yep, that’s right, I met a boy.  It turned out to be just a vacation fling, but he was a nice guy and we had a lot in common (so much in common that it’s really too bad it was just a vacation fling) and we had a lot of fun together.  One interesting thing did happen while we were hanging out, though…. I said bang, bang, bangity bang, I said bang bang bangity bang! bum bum bum bang bang bangity bang….

Sticky Rice

Sticky rice in Laos is served in these cute little baskets.  It is supposed to be rolled into balls and eaten with your hands.  At least, I really hope that’s how it’s meant to be eaten, or I’ll feel like an idiot (because that’s exactly how I ate it).

Laap

I have a Thai friend who comes from Issan, and she taught me how to make laap.  I really like the recipe for laap which my friend taught me, so I was hesitant to try laap in Laos lest I be disappointed.  What ended up happening was that I only tried laap once in Laos and I was, indeed, disappointed.  Instead of minced meat, the restaurant where I ordered it used bigger pieces of chicken.  Also, they completely, 100%, omitted the dried red chilies which were supposed to be there, so the taste was super disappointing.  Anyway, here you can see a picture of the laap which I ate.  My camera was acting up that day, and for some reason, the only pictures I could get were extremely bright reflective pictures or really blurry smudgy pictures.  There was no happy medium.  I think maybe my camera was on drugs that day.  Yeah, that’s it—after all, we were in Vang Vieng when my camera decided to be a dumbass, and we all know what goes on in Vang Vieng.  Can we pretend that this picture is truly meant to be a whimsical picture of laap and not that my camera was super stoned?  Mmmthat’dbegreat…

But for realsies, maybe when I get back to Yangon and can cook in my very own kitchen again, I’ll share my own laap recipe and method with you with step-by-step pictures.  Would you like that?

Coconut Shake

Shakes are kind of a thing all over South Asia, but especially in Vang Vieng.  You can get any kind of shake you can imagine here in Vang Vieng, even a happy shake.  I guess I prefer to be a slight grumpuss because I didn’t want to be happy; I just wanted to be me.  So I went ahead and ordered a coconut shake.  It tasted so strongly of coconut that either they used a LOT of coconut in it (I doubt it) or they used artificial coconut flavouring (probably much more likely).  Either way, it was tasty and refreshing on a hot afternoon in Vang Vieng, and a perfect drink for spending the day zoning out watching old episodes of Friends (which is something that is done in Vang Vieng).

RESTAURANT REVIEWS: Dyen Sabai

Before I take a trip, I usually buy a Lonely Planet for ideas of things to see, places to stay, and where to eat.  Also, I usually end up following their walking tour because it’s usually pretty okay.  The walking tour for Luang Prabang in Lonely Planet ends by crossing the bamboo bridge to have dinner and/or drinks at Dyen Sabai.  But that only works if it’s the dry season, as there’s no bamboo bridge during the rainy season and hang on, I’m here during the rainy season so dammit!  Meh, oh well, I got tired and hot halfway through the walking tour and kind of abandoned it a little bit to go take a nap (I’ve been to Luang Prabang before and seen all the sights, many years ago, so I didn’t feel like I need to exactly cherish every single moment here– I cherish my naps as well) and had fully decided to just try a different restaurant instead of Dyen Sabai.  I mean, it was LP’s recommendation, but then again, other restaurants sounded just as good.

What ended up happening was this.  After my nap, when the day was cooling off, I went out for a walk.  As I was walking down that main street in Luang Prabang, I caught a glimpse down a side street of the river and, on a whim, decided to go down to the water.  When I got there, I found two Lao guys hanging out, wearing Dyen Sabai t-shirts advertising that they will take you across the river for free to get you to Dyen Sabai in their cute little boat.  Mmm, okay.  I wasn’t actually hungry, but I did kind of want to go in their boat.

So we get across the river and I head up this little path and make my way into Dyen Sabai.  Okay, let me tell you, the place is gorgeous and I can see why it would have been LP’s recommendation.  If I were an expatriate in Luang Prabang, I think I’d pretty much live at Dyen Sabai.

Full disclosure: I’d kind of had a late lunch before my nap, and I was kind of planning on going back to the same restaurant as before to eat the exact same food as before for dinner (my camera battery died just as my food arrived, and I’d been planning on blogging about it and I guess I learned a valuable lesson about keeping my camera battery fully charged whilst on a food blogging mission– more on that in another post).  I could have had roughly the same food at Dyen Sabai, although it would have been a little more expensive and have I mentioned I’m broke?  Also, I wasn’t actually hungry yet.  So I sat there wondering what to do, mulling it all over, and then I realised that IT’S HAPPY HOUR!  Wahoo!!  I’m sure the food at Dyen Sabai is lovely, but who can argue with two mint daiquiris for the price of one (and they have other exciting daiquiri flavours on their menu, as well).   And thus ends my Dyen Sabai adventure.  Yeah, if you make it to Luang Prabang, definitely go there.

Pssssst, Lonely Planet, over here!  Sidebar:  I’d like a job.  Give me a job.  Please?  Mmmthanks!