Seeing that we're only going to be contained to the southern part of the country on this trip, it seemed worthwhile to come to this place (122B Tran Quoc Thao, District 3, 93-17096), which specializes in the three primary culinary areas of the country: Hanoi in the north, Hue in the center, and of course Saigon in the south.
We got a number of items, my favorite of the bunch being the cha ca, a speciality of Hanoi featuring pieces of fish sitting in a pot on a burner, which you then scoop out onto rice noodles and season to taste. Interestingly, this thing was loaded with dill weed, which I never would have thought would be an element of Vietnamese cuisine (it was also featured in some meatball things that we had). It wasn't bad (it definitely wasn't that diep ca leaf), but it just came across as odd to me since I always associated dill weed with Scandinavian herring instead.
The other items we got, including some rather pricey fish (eel?) soup and some rice steamed in lotus leaf turned out fine, but honestly I didn't get that excited about this, just as with the restaurant food last night. I think it's best that we stick to street food from here on out. The street food out here has been amazing, but this upscale restaurant stuff just isn't as inspiring.
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