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.

Lao Pancakes

A few hours before I was about to embark on a twelve hour bus journey from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, I walked past a woman working by the side of the road making something interesting.  Well, you know me—when I see interesting food, it stops me dead in my tracks.  So I stopped and watched her for awhile.  She told me she was making Lao pancakes.  Making Lao pancakes involves pouring a batter into a mould that looks a little bit like a poached egg mold (if you make your poached eggs the easy way).  Then, she would pour some coconut milk into the batter as it cooked and she would sprinkle a few chives on top.  When it was “ready” (and I couldn’t really figure out how she knew when they were ready, but she seemed to know), she would flip one half circle on top of another half circle and they would join together as they cooked just a little longer.  She sold the pancakes in baskets made out of banana leaves with a little baggie of sweet hot chili sauce.

As with the myriad other street vendors who I end up standing in front of, mesmerised, she ended up offering that I could buy some.  The problem was, I’ve been eating myself so silly lately that I really wasn’t hungry.  But I really wanted to try those cute little pancakes, too.  I told her I was going to go for a little walk, and I would come back and buy some from her before I set off for my stupid long bus ride.

Well, just as I got back to the street vendor, she was in the midst of selling her last two banana leaf baskets of pancakes.  The person who had just bought them was at least kind enough to let me get a photo of the baskets.  As that person was walking away, I noticed that the street vendor still had two lonely little pancakes left on her grill, so I asked her whether I could buy just one, and she said she’d let me do that, which worked out perfectly for me, as I was, truth be told, still not even remotely hungry.  So I sat there with that street vendor and her daughter and sampled the pancakes.  Whereas for the other customer she served the pancakes with a baggie of sweet hot chili sauce, for me she set a bowl of sugar next to my pancakes, which I was meant to sprinkle onto it.  It was, mmm, pretty okay.

Murthapa!

Just a few weeks ago, I was ecstatic at my discovery of mataba in Bangkok.  Now that I’m here in Vientiane, I’ve notice a vendor selling something called “murthapa”.  I stopped and took a closer look one day and lo and behold, it’s the same as what my cute little covered lady was doing in Bangkok!  Yays!  I don’t need to wait to get back to Bangkok to have more mataba!  I actually think my cute little covered lady in Bangkok made tastier mataba, but hey, I’m just happy to be able to have more of it.

RESTAURANT REVIEWS: Le Banneton

Le Moulin (custard with chocolate chips)

Le Papillon (custard with tropical fruits)

Tarte au Citron

Petite Tarte au Fraise

Tarte aux Abricots

Croissant with Custard and Almond

Tarte aux Pommes

Viennoiserie Poire et Chocolat

I went to Le Banneton the other morning for two reasons: (1) it is billed by Lonely Planet as the best bakery in town and (2) it’s a convenient 30-second walk from my guesthouse, and okay, food is my kryptonite and the promise of delicious pastries is just something I can’t pass up.  I always have a hard time with things which are labelled as the “best” because that just sets people up for disappointment, but I was very pleased to find that Le Banneton does not disappoint at all.  In fact, it was so good I went back later in the day for more, even though I wasn’t particularly hungry, and then I went back the next day as well.  And maybe the next day, too.  Not only is their food beautiful, it’s delicious, and the inside of the restaurant, while plain and simple, has a few French touches like rustic wooden beams which make it feel very comfortable.  And if the food and comfortable atmosphere isn’t reason enough to go, the owner is very kind.  This is certainly a place I really enjoyed and would love to go back again and again for further, ahem, research.

Le Banneton also offers a selection of sandwiches and… oh, alright, I didn’t make it past their pastries, but the meals the other customers were eating looked amazing.  They certainly offer sandwiches, as well as other delicious food.  AND ice cream!  They have ice cream, too.  Ice cream is important.

I think you’d have to have a pretty big stick shoved up your ass to not enjoy Le Banneton.  It’s the type of place that would certainly make a European feel right at home, but even us country bumpkin types from North America are able to appreciate how good it is.  Please go there if you visit Vientiane.

Hipsterrific Yogurt in Laos

I think this is an amazing product available from the convenience store here in Laos.  It’s homemade products for healthy living in Vientiane, Lao.  When you read the ingredients list on the side of this yogurt container, it’s pretty much as close to all natural as you could get.  This is the type of yogurt that hipsters in Seattle would buy from their local farmer’s market.*  The only problem with this yogurt is that it’s a little expensive.  One single serving of yogurt costs 9,000 kip.  For comparison, one large bottle of Beerlao costs 9,000 kip.  Either the yogurt’s really expensive or Beerlao is extremely cheap.

I wasn’t actually hungry, but I was too curious about this yogurt to pass it up, so I went with the Mango Passion Yogurt and the Coconut Jelly Yogurt and let me tell you, I ate them in the wrong order!  They were both good, but (imo) the coconut jelly flavour was way better.

*Or at least, what I’d imagine hipsters in Seattle would buy.  I’ve never actually been to Seattle, but I have met hipsters from Seattle.