On Sunday, Dr. Nho and his family, picked us up for a “broken rice” breakfast. Breakfast was in a run-down-looking, open-air, pavilion-like, restaurant that you couldn’t find without knowing it was there. But, we swayed and bumped across construction ruts out near the harbor and entered a packed parking lot. The restaurant seems to be one of those those places known to the cognoscenti, like the old farmhouse restaurant, where everybody in Oxford goes. A high spirited former patient, from whom Dr. Nho had completely delivered a left frontal meningioma, met the Nhos there.
At first glance, the breakfast looked modest: a scoop of white “broken rice” on a simple white plate was capped to one side with thin slivers of sautéed onions and a slice of fried pork was on the top. Unfamiliar spicy flavors made the combination work. There was also a piece of bread that contained vegetables, maybe eggplant. Some Vietnamese tea and Vietnamese drip coffee filled the menu out. It was terrific, cost almost nothing, and worth writing home about, as you see.
Tags: Vietnam