Quick Blog on Phoung Trang

So, the other week we went to Phoung Trang. We hadn't been there in a while, so it was quite a treat to go. We got the spring rolls, which are big, but not as big as at Saigon. These were pretty good. They were fresh and had a good ratio of noodle to lettuce. Sometimes they are all noodle, and sometimes all veg, and sometimes they are not rolled tightly enough. These were nicely rolled and had a good noodle veg ratio, which is probably 3:2.



See the heart? We have this habit of putting siracha on our plates, then dipping the spring roll in the siracha, then in the peanut sauce. So the Food Pimp was being cute and he put the heart on my plate. Isn't that romantic. Making something sweet out of something that later burns your anus......



So the FP got My Tho's Rice Noodle Soup, or Hu Tieu My Tho. This is the shrimp and pork soup with baby celery stems. The celery is what makes the soup really delicious. It's just really... fresh tasting. Just always a good soup, in our experience.





So what did I get? I thought of the shrimp, pork and jellyfish salad. Instead, I got the squid salad. Something different.



It came with the shrimp chips, which are always a plus. They remind me of my childhood. They're a bittersweet memory of my shame of my culture as a child. I loved shrimp chips, but whenever I had a birthday party or some friends over, no one ate them. They were scared of the different colors and unknown flavor. It made me embarrassed to eat them. So I ate them without the presence of my non-flip friends. Later on, when I started wanting to be different, it didn't bug me as much to eat stuff that freaked people out. But in elementary school, I really wanted to fit in and have a mom who made macaroni and cheese and hot dogs for dinner.

So anyway, the shrimp chips are good for scooping the salad up. The salad itself kind of sucked. It consisted of long strands of carrot and daikon or jicama, leaf lettuce, some other stuff, and stinky squid. Yes. Stinky. Very stinky. Poached squid. And stinky squid. I eat strong smelling seafood, but that was too much. I ate one or two pieces. One piece was okay. The other was musky. So I ended up just pushing all the squid to one side. Guess they weren't moving the squid too much. Very disappointing. I have to say that Saigon's salad is better. Stinky squid aside. I never had it with squid at Saigon. But the salad itself at Saigon is big slices of pickled vegetable. Carrot and celery mainly. Delicious. I had reasoned that if it were so good at Saigon, it would be amazing at Phoung Trang. Wrong!!!! I guess they wanted to do it different at Phoung Trang. And more stinkily.



Here it is again. Just for identification. The stinky squid salad. Looks innocuous enough. Don't let it fool you though.

Comments

caninecologne said…
hi! i'm gonna have to order that salad you had that comes with shrimp chips. i love that stuff.

my childhood shame is also related to food. my mom used to make us "potted meat" sandwiches. you know, the canned shit - deviled ham, liverwurst. and sometimes she'd put chopped hard boiled eggs it in. yeah. fart fuel. and it fkn smelled too. or sometimes she put SPAM (which I do like) in the sandwiches but the spam wouldn't be fried. it would be all slimy out of the can and on white bread. my white clasmates thought i had bad smelling food.

another peeve was that my mom didn't cut apples with a nice apple slicer with a corer. she didn't cut them into wedges. my mom would slide each end off (half spheres), then cut the remaining sides, which resulted in wierd shaped apple slices. sounds trivial, but when you're one of the few Filipino kids in elementary school, it made me a target of curiosity/abuse. "hey, what the hell is that? is that a potato chip?" "Why do you bring rice for lunch?" and blah blah blah. i just wanted a baloney sandiwch like everyone else.

sorry, that was a long ass comment.

btw, one of my friend's wife (she's vietnamese) calls Phuong Trang the Vietnamese Denny's. it's one of our go to spots if we're in the area. the parking lot sucks.
The Food Ho said…
If you order the salad - make sure you get the one with the jellyfish, pork and shrimp - not the squid!

I liked the devilled ham too! Never had it packed for lunch though. I also liked spam, but fried. My mom made me scrambled egg sandwiches for lunch. I thought that scrambled egg was egg salad. Years later I realized egg salad was something altogether different!

Vietnamese Denny's, huh? The parking lot does suck, but I have to call up a stereotype here - asians are not the best drivers. A lot of them have no business driving these huge suvs.
caninecologne said…
i liked spam (and still do) but that shit has to be fried up. just sliced out of the can was vomit inducing but we were too scared to tell our mom back then.

thanks for the tip about the salad. yeah, i just reread your post and you did say that the squid wasn't that great. i'll try the jellyfish/shrimp one.

re: Asian drivers. there was one time some little Asian lady cut someone off in the parking lot. it was a white lady. that lady got out of her car after she parked and verbally harassed the Asian lady, who just ignored her or pretended she didn't speak English.

yeah, people can't drive there and they can't park within the damn lines either. a worse parking lot is the one with crab hut down the street. good luck with that one.