KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 24 — Nowadays, there is no need to hop on a plane to get your Vietnamese food fix. Recently, a batch of Vietnamese places serving up the authentic taste of the faraway land have opened up.
Everything is stamped with the Vietnamese trademark of light and fresh flavours. Most importantly, it also comes with prices that won't blow a hole in your wallet.
For this week's Secret Eat, we explore a two-year old stall that sells Vietnamese products like instant noodles, sauces and condiments to homesick immigrants. The simple stall is manned by Vietnamese immigrant Kim Dung, 28, who is assisted by her sister and cousin, who all hail from the Mekong River region.
She runs the stall within the confines of a food court with her husband, a Malaysian whose company imports the Vietnamese produce.
Most patrons, especially the Vietnamese, flock here early in the morning -— since the place is open from 5.30am onwards — to grab a bite. If you prefer to dine in, there are tables and chairs within the busy food court. In two to three months, she will take up a bigger space and expand her offerings to include the quintessential pho.
Kim offers a classic Vietnamese sandwich or banh mi with all kinds of cold cuts for RM7. Known as banh mi thit nguoi, this version is believed to have first appeared in Saigon back in the 1940s.
All the cold cuts and pâté are homemade. You get a mix of textures: creamy pate mixed with butter mingling with sliced cha lua or the pale Vietnamese ham, slightly chewy headcheese pieces, and their version of char siu or slow roasted pork belly with red tinged sides.
As it's hard to get cha lua locally, Kim makes her own. The preservative-free sausage is made from pounded pork mince and flavoured with black pepper and fish sauce. It's shaped into a cylinder and wrapped with a banana leaf before it is boiled to a bouncy texture.
According to Kim, she also supplies the sausage to a popular local steamboat restaurant that serves it as a black pepper ham. You can also pick up the cha lua for home use at her stall.
Even though their Vietnamese baguette is not homemade but made by a trusted supplier, it tastes like the real deal, with it's distinct light fluffy texture and paper thin crust.
The bread is delivered daily and toasted just before she serves the sandwich. Rounding up the tasty sandwich is a refreshing carrot and white radish pickle topped with fresh lettuce, cucumber and cilantro.
The dish is jam packed with fresh flavours from chopped greens: a mix of cucumbers, lettuce and mint. What makes the whole dish incredibly appetising is the dollop of fried shallots and their Vietnamese nuoc cham dipping sauce — an aromatic concoction of lime juice, sugar, fish sauce, water, chillies and chopped garlic.
Be warned, you may want second helpings of the refreshing noodles after one taste. We definitely did.
In addition, the stall also offers gui chon or rice paper rolls (three rolls for RM5). These pretty transculent rolls are stuffed with blanched rice vermicelli, vegetables, sliced pork and prawns. Dip them in the thick soybean paste sauce with chopped peanuts, bean sprouts and fried shallots.
According to Kim, it is good enough to be eaten on its own as a crispy snack. You also get the aromatic Vietnamese coffee, pancake flour mixes, condiments like fish sauce and even Vinamilk UHT milk packets.
For the brave ones, Kim also has hot vit lon or half hatched duck eggs. They're popular with the Vietnamese who relish the half boiled eggs, as they believe it is full of nutrition. Kim gets her supply from a trusted duck farm in Johor Bahru that delivers it during the weekends. She also supplies them to other Vietnamese eateries.
If you are keen to discover this Vietnamese stall, let me know your secret eat (not necessarily Vietnamese) where you get good food and I'll exchange it for the address and directions to this place. Email your recommendations to
Source : http://www.themalaymailonline.com/eat-drink/article/fresh-and-light-vietnamese-flavours-in-the-heart-of-kuala-lumpur
