SimpleViet - San Jose

A few years ago, some website's list of "Things to Eat in San Jose" or something used a photo from my blog post in which I was eating pho. This website ran an ad on the side bar of Facebook so many people saw my photo online (with no attributions or link back to my site, boo). For a brief moment, my face was synonymous with Vietnamese people eating pho in San Jose. And that is absolutely so true because I love pho!

Pho never goes out of style in San Jose. We generally welcome all forms of traditional and experimental versions. When SimpleViet, a new eatery in south San Jose offered me a complimentary meal to try their semi-customized fast casual Vietnamese food, I was ready to chow down. 

HOW IT WORKS

You can order signature dishes of Pho, bowls, banh mi, or spring rolls. Or you can customize your own combo of meat, carb, dressing, and add-ons. $8.95 for pho or bowls. $7.95 for banh mi. $7.95 for 3 rolls. $11.95 for a meal. You can also include extra add ons for additional cost. Dine-in or order online for pick up and delivery options.

SimpleViet

The signature pho was served in a compostable paper bowl which never got soggy and never leaked during the meal. Yay! All the greens and herbs were so fresh as advertised and there's loads of everything in this tiny bowl. It looks small but contains a regular sized bowl portion that you could get at other stores. The broth is delicate and tasty. 

The bowls here are where you can really start to customize. There are 4 starch base options, 5 proteins, and 5 sauces along with loads of fresh toppings. We tried the vermicelli bowl with teriyaki beef and the vinaigrette and garlic aioli sauces. The garlic aioli sauce is great, I just wouldn't drown the bowl in it but definitely dip any of the meats into it.

We also sampled the lemon grass chicken (left) and signature honey-glazed pork (right). Both were great. The pork is the best which is probably why they put it in the signature bowl. 

Here are the 5 sauces all with fusion influence.

Lastly, I tried the signature rolls with salt and pepper poached shrimp. The portion is a decent size for rolls. I normally prefer mine with more herbaceous greens which is lacking in these rolls in favor of lighter yet still fresh flavors of pickled carrots and daikon, lettuce, and cucumber.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

SimpleViet is located in an easily accessible plaza off Bernal Road. There are many small companies nearby and it is a great lunch spot. The pho and bowl prices are comparable as many other locations charge the same. The portion size is good for the price and the ingredients are definitely fresh. Everything is made in house. They have done a great job with introducing new sauces to Vietnamese cuisine. The service is speedy and ambiance is casual. It makes a great place for take out because you order at the front.

SimpleViet

125 Bernal Rd, Unit 60

San Jose, CA 95119

Vietnam - Tourist Food in Hoi An and Cooking School

We enjoyed 4 days in Vietnam away from family when we jetted off to Hoi An. In recent years, Hoi An has become very touristy and popular for its cultural tours. For us, we just wanted to rent bikes and hang out for 4 days relaxing. Here are a few of the highlights from Hoi An.

Tyical morning scene with Vietnamese coffee and beer (spelled bia). The beer was only $0.25 USD!! 

Banana flower salad


Lanterns at the central Hoi An area


They labeled this gelato but it was just ice cream



We spent most of the time biking around to the beach to hang out.


One of the popular Hoi Anese dishes was this chicken rice which is rice cooked in chicken stock with shredded chicken pieces and herbs. This one at the beach was pretty good. It tastes like Hainanese chicken rice.

On one of the days, we took a bicycle tour and cooking class combo. The bike tour lead us through the back roads and rice paddies of Hoi An. We learned how herbs were grown and I had the chance to try old school watering cans.

The tour also took us to a bean sprout farmer's house. He had piles of sand in his backyard used to grow bean sprouts. The nutrients in the sand are only good for one crop then a new pile of sand needs to be shipped in for the next crop. The old sand can be sold to make bricks and for any other purposes. At this point it decreases in value by 1/5 the price the farmer bought it for growing.

Back at the cooking school, everyone who signs up for the class gets an all-you-can eat breakfast buffet with all these Vietnamese goodies like pho, broken rice with pork, mini banh xeo crepes, and bun cha ca (fish cake noodles). The flavors are a bit mellow and generic but most of the food was good for a buffet.

Old school noodle making machine.

I got to try a silk worm larvae for the first time. Tastes rich and creamy and nutritious. It's like eating a minty, oniony salad with creamy tofu pockets that burst in your mouth!

Hoi An is known for the white rose steamed dumpling made from rice flour that's flattened and molded around shrimp and pork paste so it looks like rose petals. Here I am failing at flattening the dough.

Phil Lau eats cao lau noodles.

Yeah, making fresh spring roll wrappers in cooking class. No rips in my wrapper!

Class finished with two scoops of ice cream per person. Phil had Cinnamon and chocolate chip. I had passion fruit and coconut. Satisfied! I highly recommend Morning Glory cooking school if you're in Hoi An. It is very touristy and Westernized but for $43 per person, you get a well planned day. The cooking is not as hands on as I wanted, or as we experienced in Thailand. The bike tour is fun and the experience in general is entertaining.

Bye!

Vietnam - Food with Family

 The first half of our Vietnam trip was spent with family in a small town called Go Cong. I was born here. I liken it to being in the middle of Arkansas or Oklahoma. In summary, we were bored out of our minds. But I did spend lots of time with family and experiencing home cooked meals in Vietnam.

The first day we arrived, my dad took us to a local pho restaurant. We walked a short distance down the street to a small corner cafe type of establishment with outdoor seating on plastic chairs. This regular sized bowl is equivalent to a small size in the US. Pho in America is actually better because the luxuries we can afford. The best pho broth is made from oxtail which is richer and more fatty. In America, you can afford to make a whole batch of broth using just oxtail. In Vietnam, the shop orders one cow for the entire day's service. This means they only have a few sections of oxtail and make their broth from other parts of the cow. The meat slices were also thicker because they are hand cut whereas our butchers use a machine to get thinner slices. Phil ordered 2 bowls and this made the restaurant owners very happy. Locals don't usually need 2 bowls to be full.

That green fruit is star apple (trai vu sua). If you literally translate the Vietnamese name, it means mother's milk. It comes in a round apple-like shape and is soft. The best way to eat it is to massage the whole fruit, rip out the stem, suck the white milky fruit through the opening left by the stem. Once the fruit is all shriveled up, you know you're done. That's why it's called mother's milk, it's just like a boob! Sweet, soft, juicy.

A special family lunch. We were told that typical family meals are not like this. A meal like this at my cousin's house was prepared because we were special guests. They killed 2 of their chickens for this chicken porridge. The chicken was really lean and chewy. Much different than chicken in the US. Definitely hormone-free and raised free range.

On a separate day, we had a large lunch with fresh spring rolls. There were too many people to fit around the table so my cousins cleaned the floor of their outdoor porch area and we all ate on the ground.

A nutritious soup made from fighting roosters and papaya. This is also a rare treat and possibly illegal and an aphrodisiac for men. These roosters were bred to fight. This guy probably lost of retired and is now someone's meal. The soup was sweet from the papaya and rich from the chicken. The chicken meat itself was even more chewy than regular backyard chickens.

Fried rice

This might be more chicken served with lemon grass

We stayed with my aunt who made some pretty interesting snacks for dinner. These are fresh shrimp just boiled and dipped in a fish sauce. It was really sweet and fresh. One of my favorite eats in Vietnam even though it was so simple.

[WARNING: The following food item is not for the faint of heart. If you don't like weird food like balut, please do not look.]

Looks like a normal bowl of quail eggs, but these are actually quail egg balut. They are specifically bred and incubated to have a quail embryo inside. The preparation is just to boil the eggs, peel, and eat with a salt/pepper/lemon dip and greens.

Gross? No, very delicious, nutritious, juicy. Full of protein and much easier to eat than duck egg balut because it's bite sized. This is my favorite bite in Vietnam. Is it inhumane? Yes, but when in Rome...There are so many things in Vietnam that are inhumane, and yet at the same they utilize all parts of an entire cow without discarding anything. 

Bun Rieu

My mom's bun rieu is my favorite Vietnamese soup of all time. Yes, it trumps pho by a long shot. Bun rieu is a Vietnamese crab noodle soup served with split ong choy stalks and leaves and sometimes with escargot. Today I attempted to make bun rieu for the first time.

The pork broth was made by simmering 1lb of pork spare ribs with 4-5 cups of water, some sauteed garlic, and 4 large dried shrimp with peel on. I cooked it for about 3 hours total on medium. You only need 1.5 hours but I was hoping to draw out more of the flavor from the shrimps.

Here's the broth halfway through cooking.

Here's the broth after adding tomatoes, canned crab, and crab paste (pictured below). I also added fish sauce, sugar, and shrimp paste to taste in order to balance the flavors. 

 Here are all the ingredients named above + vermicelli for later.

I deep fried some silken tofu. It should be the firmer tofu because silken is too soft but this was all we had on hand. It holds up decently though. It takes about 10 minutes to fry a batch in vegetable oil.

 

Here's the final set up. My bowl of bun rieu with rau moung (ong choy veggie), green onions, lime wedges, and more shrimp paste. 

How did it taste? Pretty good. A very decent and noble first try. It didn't give me the sort of joy that my mom's version did but I will get there one day. I love putting in so much rau moung and then adding piping hot broth so that it cooks the stems into a soft noodle texture. I definitely need to split my rau moung into finer strands. I'm also missing bean sprouts and a handful of fresh herbs. There is something missing from my broth and seasoning. A few more experiments should help me figure it out. In the meantime, if you want a good recipe, of course, refer to the Ravenous Couple for their bun rieu recipe. Their recipe calls for a ground pork and crab ball mixture that is often served with this dish at restaurants too. That is pretty good but not needed. Since I'm not a huge fan of pork, I opted not to try making it and prefer to just load up my broth with crab meat.

Bo Luc Lac - Vietnamese cubed beef over tomatoes and watercress

Using a handful of the watercress from our watercress soup ingredients, I made this bo luc lac dish for the following night. Most people translate this to "shaken" beef because "luc lac" means the sound or movements of the cubes shaking back and forth. Let's be honest though, there's no shaking really, just stirring so let's call cubed beef what it is. It's not exactly something new as this style of marinade is my default for beef but the presentation on a bed of watercress, tomatoes, and onions in a vinaigrette gives it a refreshing spin.

Ever since the blogger platform stopped using Picnik as its photo editing tool, I lost the ability to rotate my pictures. What a shame blogger...I may migrate away from you soon...

Anyway, Phil made a quick seafood scrambled egg and we served the bo luc lac dish with brown rice and some leftover papaya salad. You can use this recipe from the Ravenous Couple for bo luc lac. They always do a good job. But if your family has a tried and true recipe that's different, it's great to learn from family too. My mom used to make this often for our family and sometimes she would use lettuce instead of watercress because some people find it too bitter. The marinade can always be tweaked and the vinaigrette can be changed too.