Eat Dallas: Non-white people edition

While researching the culinary scene in Dallas I stumbled upon a Chowhound thread that went completely off-topic into a discussion about getting Vietnamese food in Dallas versus New York City. It's a widely known fact that internet posting boards are the best, most accurate places for getting information, so I was intrigued by said discussion. Apparently the DFW metroplex has a large Vietnamese population, coincidentally enough, they are known to make some great Vietnamese food.To me that was reason enough to warrant some investigation, which meant getting in a friend's rental car (damn! and we were so close to making it through the trip without a car!) and heading up to the Richardson and Garland area just north of Dallas, where a large community of Asian-Americans resides.

We were headed specifically to Pho Bang, a Vietnamese restaurant located, perhaps not surprisingly, in a nondescript strip mall in Garland. Upon being seated I was happy to this had the right amount of asian-ness to it for our group. 90% of the customers were Vietnamese, always a key thing to look for in ethnic restaurants, but they still had English translations on the menu, which meant we weren't walking into a complete minefield.

First things first we decided on ordering some pho, which for the unfamiliar is a Vietnamese soup that can be customized in countless ways and provides a backbone to the cuisine of the region. It's tasty, filling, and a staple for Vietnamese restaurants. I haven't had pho enough times to consider myself an expert, but I found the offering from Pho Bang to be as good as hoped. I did leave the restaurant wondering perhaps if my pho etiquette was a little off. I have been under the belief that the bowl of pho is much like a plate of nachos, in that you just customize it how you want by throwing in all sorts of things like chili paste, sirachi, plum sauce, greens, thai basil, and making one big bowl of super soup. But casual glances around the restaurant showed some of the locals eating theirs by mixing up small side dishes of spices and sauces in which to dip the solid contents of their soup, leaving the broth pristine and in its original form. Was I creating the Vietnamese version of the Chimichanga? By throwing in a bunch of shit into a bowl of carefully crafted soup was I just ruining the balance and delicacy of the flavor? Part of me wants to say yes, but I am not sure what the proper procedure is here, or perhaps there is none at all.
But the ethical dilemma of properly consuming a soup was nothing compared to our attempts to order an appetizer for our meal. Seeing as the menu at Pho Bang offered Spring Rolls, a light, delicious favorite of mine, I suggested we try the Summer Rolls, something different but most likely similar. Our order prompted some concern from our Vietnamese waitress, who seemed to think (correctly, I might add), that we didn't know what we were ordering. After a few minutes of her repeatedly saying something in unintelligible English and tugging at the skin of her arm, we decidedly nodded that we in fact did want to order the Summer Rolls, despite not really understanding any of what she had been trying to tell us.

"Pork Skin" was the magic translation, lost in a sea of accents and flesh grabbing. Honestly I don't remember exactly how we figured that one out, but our rolls arrived in true Vietnamese fashion, stuffed with shredded (probably boiled?) pork skin. The rubbery strings of skin snapped back and whipped your lips with each bite, a sensation unlike any I had ever had before. It was most akin to eating an egg roll with roughly chopped rubber bands in it. The rolls themselves had a pungent taste that was far from agreeable with my Western taste buds, and no amount of dipping in the bowl of sweet and sour sauce that accompanied them could dull the flavor. I did my best to finish the roll, determined 1) to be adventurous and eat something I did not like right away, and 2) to not let the waitress see that we should have heeded her warnings. My dining companion Mike perhaps summed it up best by describing them as "one of the most 'ethnic' things I have ever eaten".

But the adventure is part of the thrill of it all, and in the end we were rewarded with a delicious, authentic (at least as far as I can tell) Vietnamese meal. It was a small way to enjoy another side of Dallas, and a style of food that's not as readily available to me in Milwaukee.

This post devolved more into an exploration of Vietnamese cuisine than I was expecting, but perhaps that is much more interesting than our trip to Taqueria El Si Hay. This place was just a classically good Mexican taco shop in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas. All I can say is that when you find a solid place like that you just have to appreciate that they know what they are doing. Nothing I've never had before, but just about as good as I've had elsewhere. In fact their salsa verde was pretty kick ass, and had that rich color that I can never seem to achieve with mine. I have thought that maybe its because I don't cook mine down enough, but it could also just be that my gringo blood will never allow me to achieve perfection in Mexican cooking.

And on top of everything else it had the classic signs of good ethnic food. We were there at 2 in the afternoon, it was packed, and 90% of the customers were Mexican.