Quan Ho Tay, Saigon

When a restaurant is filled with locals and not a word of English to be found, you know it's gotta be good. That's the kind of place that my local colleague took me to today (20B Tran Cao Van, 824-3814), where they apparently specialize in three specific items: nam Saigon, banh tom, and bun cha.

The first of which were simple egg rolls, although done in a Northern Vietnamese style (although admittedly I'm still not quite sure how it differs from the Southern Vietnamese version...something about the rice paper, I'm told). Wrap it up into some lettuce, add some greens, and dip away into the sauce. The second item, banh tom, was a set of deep fried shrimp cake things, which were cut up and again shoved into a lettuce wrapper and dipped into the sauce.

The final item was bun cha, which involved no wrapping and was pretty much the thing that I unsuccessfully looked for in Can Tho the other day. This was the grilled meat thing that you tossed onto some noodles, added some thin sauce, and ate away. Big thumbs up here!