 My junior year of high school was my first year ever in America, and I was still learning the rope of living here, high school dance among other things. A friend invited me to Homecoming. For the pre-dance dinner, he talked about going to a Vietnamese restaurant named Mai in Houston. I didn’t know exactly where it was or what it was (this was 2002, Google Maps and Yelp didn’t exist), but I thought that was considerate of him. In the end, we went to a steakhouse instead, I thought it was because Mai was a bit too far away, and I was left wondering what Mai was like. A few years later, my host parents mentioned Mai again in passing conversation, and suggested we went together sometime. The place, dated back to 1978, is known as the very first Vietnamese restaurant in Houston, and pretty much every Houstonian knows at least its name. My parents and I were interested, but again, days passed and we forgot. One day in early 2010, news came that the restaurant had been destroyed by a fire. We sighed, somewhat regretful. Luckily, it reopened. I forget how and when we […]
Continue reading Mai’s Restaurant – 35 years and counting
 They never blink. They never wag their tails. They never mutter a sound. I can never tell what they are thinking or feeling when I look at them. I like them deep-fried, or pan-charred with salt, lemongrass, and pepper, but that’s mostly because of the seasoning mix they’re fried with. By themselves, they are cold-blooded creatures with a distinctive smell, tiny bones resembling oversized needles, very little fat, and worst of all, flaky meat. They’re quite abundant in Vietnam, both alive and cooked. I even like the dipping sauce made out of them. I just don’t like them. Something about their meat freaks me out, or perhaps it’s the childhood memory of having a bone of them stuck in my throat that damages my feeling for those footless fellas. I would have never done it, but my mom, craving for some motherland’s taste, ordered canh chua cá (fish sour-soup) when we went to Kim Son the other day. How could she… fish and soup? Well, it turned out to be the best dish on the table. Canh is soup. Usually the vegetables in canh are leafy greens, and because canh came about before the French and […]
Continue reading Multitaste soup – canh chua ca at Kim Son
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