What is the point of swallowing the last 10 years of Hanoi food writing from U.S. magazines, visiting said city for a holiday-come-assignment, talking to the self same people you’ve read about in those U.S. magazines and spewing 2,129 words of uninspired, unoriginal, factually inaccurate, poop out the orifice of an American printing press at the other end? I dunno, but maybe the editors at The Smithsonian can tell us.

It’s worth taking a look over at Noodlepie as Graham Holliday eviscerates the latest steamy gut-pile of parachute journalism on Hanoian phở. I’m still amazed that there is a market for articles where the journalists interview just the “cultural translators” – those handy English-speaking experts who can be relied on for a pithy quote – rather than the people who cook the dish on a daily basis.

• Phở Chu The, Footscray (17)
• Miming for Bun (2)
• Banh Mi Doner Kebab (2)
• The Ribs of Sapa (4)
• Cha Cha Cha (8)

The equation that can’t be avoided when you travel for food is the one where you compare Third World prices to First World and try to account for the differences, offseting rent, ingredient quality and labour. It is a fun but fruitless diversion. The above bánh xèo from Quan Đình Sơn, next to Saigon Supermarket in Footscray is $10 for a crepe the size of your forearm. A full cubit of bánh xèo.

$10 would buy 16 plates of bánh xèo from my local market in Cambodia but it wouldn’t buy one this good. Once again, my weekend phở trip gets derailed.

Đình Sơn’s is packed with shelled prawns and slices of fatty pork. The crepe skirts the border of crispy and chewy. It’s rich and coconut-y. The side plate of cos and butter lettuce, used for rolling up chunks of the crepe and dipping in the sweet dipping sauce nước chấm, is generous and refilled as I plough through it. There isn’t much else in the way of distraction in the restaurant: the obligatory TV is on the blink; there’s barely enough mirrored tiles to form an entrancing hall of mirrors; their shrine is perfunctory. Shoppers pass on the way into Saigon Supermarket and pick up meals to go from the bain marie.

The menu boasts about a hundred Chinese and Vietnamese dishes but the key here is to order from the corkboard just below the plastic menu board which contains a few kho dishes, dry fried noodles and the bánh xèo, written up in permanent marker.

Location: Shop 1, 63 Nicholson Street (cnr Byron St), Footscray VIC 3011

• Phở Chu The, Footscray (17)
• Bánh Mì Xiu Mai (6)
• “The only reason to move to Sydney would be to kick Bill Granger in his white-panted balls” (8)
• Sapa Hills, Footscray (3)
• Hùng Vương, Footscray (7)

I had grand plans to work my way through the phở of the Melbourne suburb of Footscray, bucket-sized bowls of beef soup every weekend, but never quite got there. There are no less than 20 phở establishments within easy walking distance but every time that I kick things off, I get the nagging feeling that it is just not worth the effort. Phở in Melbourne is above average. Terrible phở is the exception (but not impossible to find). Brilliant phở only exists in people’s homes.

I’d love to be proven wrong.

You’ll never find a rich, herbal phở on the streets of Melbourne. The herbage that accompanies usually will only stretch to basil with the occasional appearance of mint. Sawtooth coriander, ngo om (rice paddy herb), or any other miscellaneous herb that could differentiate an outstanding bowl of phở, while widely available across Melbourne, never make it into a phở restaurant. The broths are beefy but the spice is toned down. The meat in each bowl is great – a big step above the Saigon street corner – but it can’t carry the dish.

Chu The has two outlets: one in Richmond, the other in the dead centre of Footscray, opposite the market. The Footscray joint is packed, all the time. Their phở bo dac biet (beef special), above, is sweet and umami. A few glassy fingers of tendon are glassy and cooked to rubbery perfection but it is otherwise much of the same.

The damage: small bowl of phở bo dac biet: A$7.50

Location: 92 Hopkins St, Footscray

• Sapa Hills, Footscray (3)
• Bánh Mì Xiu Mai (6)
• “The only reason to move to Sydney would be to kick Bill Granger in his white-panted balls” (8)
• Hùng Vương, Footscray (7)
• Bánh Xèo from Đình Sơn (6)

Having Austin around did act as a handy reminder of the unparalleled diversity of food in Melbourne. For example, I live in a suburb dominated by two of the most disparate of the world’s cuisines: Ethiopian and Vietnamese. As I wander about a market named after an English monarch, I snack on Turkish (or maybe, Balkan(?)) street food because I can’t help myself.

This borek is a spicy lamb-filled pastry, baked in flat rows on a tray, on site at the Queen Victoria Market. Served hot, the oil oozing from the pastry burns through the paper bag. They also do spinach and cheese, which compared to the lamb, is almost superfluous.

A decent length of borek still retails for $2.50; one of the great Melbourne bargain street foods.

• The sultry sounds of Queen Victoria Market (3)
• F-Shed at Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne (2)
• Footscray Market: Opening Hours (5)
• Bánh Xèo from Đình Sơn (6)
• Phở Chu The, Footscray (17)

Both Austin and I are huge fans of Northern Thai food, the cuisine that skirts the Burmese border in Thailand’s northern provinces. He’s been spending plenty of time up there and myself, not nearly enough. Austin came up with a menu.

Here’s my take on it.

Sai Ua

I’d been keen to make David Thompson’s recipe for sai ua in his book Thai Food for quite some time. It’s a greasy pork sausage from Chiang Mai that is packed full of chilli, lemongrass, coriander, shredded lime leaves and hog fat. You spot it throughout Northern Thailand as a street food, chopped into bite-size chunks and served in a plastic bag. The chilli-reddened grease from it coats the inside of the bag and as a consequence, your hand.

When I came across the handful of sausage recipes in Thai Food, it did make me wonder, how many of these recipes have ever been cooked by the owners of Thompson’s tome? Chiang Mai sausage making requires an interlocking interest in regional Thai cuisine and charcuterie. In my experience, these fascinations tend to be mutually exclusive.

I’m not going to repeat the recipe here. Do David Thompson a favour and buy his book. Recipe is on page 518. My liner notes for the recipe:

• There is no need to smoke the sausage over dessicated coconut. Just grill it over an open fire. I get the feeling that Thompson added this step because it works in a commercial kitchen. If you’re cooking commercially, you can smoke the sausage in advance then finish the sausage on a flat grill because it is much quicker than the leisurely route of slow-cooking it over coals.
• More chilli. The recipe suggests 6-10 dried chillies and we used about 20. If you feel unsure about this, grind up the sausage mix with only half the chilli then fry up a test patty. We still didn’t get the color quite right – it needed to be redder. The next batch that I try will use a mix of powdered chilli and dried chillies. Otherwise the mix of herbs is spot on.
• If you’re using a commercial sausage maker, use the coarsest grind available and aim for a fat content of around 35-40%. They’re fattier than your average sausage and don’t need to bind as firmly as a western sausage. The herb mix can run straight through the meat grinder instead being pounded into a paste as Thompson suggests. The result is much closer to Austin and my recollection of Northern sausages, which have very coarse chunks of lemongrass and fine shards of lime leaf still intact.

Kaeng Hang Ley

Austin brought with him a collection of spices from Mae Hong Song, including the freshest turmeric powder I have ever smelled and the local Mae Hong Son “masala” powder, so we hit up Footscray for fresh ingredients. If you’re keen on making this particular curry, Austin has the hang ley recipe. For Thai ingredients in Melbourne, visit Nathan Thai Grocers at 9 Paisley St in Footscray. They’re amazingly well stocked with Thai goods and have a pre-prepared Hang Ley paste. At Nathan, we could find a Thai-brand sweet sticky soy and shrimp pastes just to take the dish to an extreme of regional correctness. As a coincidence, I already had Thai tamarind pulp (which is really no different from any other tamarind).

Pork belly is official local meat of Footscray. It can be found at every single butcher in the suburb, apart from the two lonely Halal meateries. I buy mine in Footscray Market because there are enough suppliers there that you can always pick out the right piece.

Saa

This recipe calls for young pea shoots and leaves, we had to settle for some slighty older and more bitter ones from Little Saigon Supermarket in Footscray. Multiple vendors had deep fried pork skin used to top this salad, but the Northern Thai-style of pork crackling which is cut into thin strips was nowhere to be seen.

Key Sources

Nathan Thai Video and Grocery, 9 Paisley St, Footscray. They’re friendly guys and even have a blog, documenting incoming Thai videos.

Little Saigon Market, 63 Nicholson Street, Footscray. Best for vegetables from across Asia. Also a good spot to pick up hard to find dried fish.

Footscray Market, 81 Hopkins St, Footscray. I only visit here for meats, mostly fish and pork.

• The road to Mae Hong Son (15)
• The Other History of Khao Soi (8)
• Bánh Xèo from Đình Sơn (6)
• Phở Chu The, Footscray (17)
• Bánh Mì Xiu Mai (6)

The lengthy process began by cooking hot dogs and potatoes sous-vide; the hot dogs at a carefully calculated temperature and time ratio of 53.2ºC for 73 hours and 22 minutes, the potatoes at 84.7C for 2 hours 17 minutes (Starch begins to break down at temperatures of 78C and above. Natural pectins, which are the molecular glue holding all plant cells together, do not begin to break down until 85C):

For that bit of extra luxury, the potatoes were prepared confit with the help of the finest street fat available, Crisco.

There was supposed to be a methylcellulose tomato sauce “ribbon” but it failed.

They mock me for my lack of a “modern” kitchen. This is a throwdown, biatches. I know you’re in my country, Austin.

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Dosa Hut is the best restaurant in Melbourne; at least it is if you have $6.50 in your pocket and a hankering for Indian street food, which neatly outlines the problem with picking “best” restaurants. It’s contextual. I hate recommending restaurants to people that I don’t know because I’ll get their context wrong with invariable certainty. Dosa Hut has the utilitarian feel of a joint built by someone whose chief skill is making dosa rather than interior design. Cheap lattice and leftover Christmas decorations spruce up the hasty mango paint job.

Above is the lamb dosa ($6.50), a pancake with a gradient from crispy on the outside edges to chewy at its core, filled with cooked ground lamb and masala. There are not less than 20 different dosa on the menu and I haven’t been in Dosa Hut once when they have had a stock of paneer, India’s favourite cheese, to make any of the three or four paneer dosa. The tray’s contents are spicy/sour tomato chutney, the ubiquitous sambar and coconut chutney. I’m still not sure how it is possible to make coconut chutney that keeps its whiteness whilst retaining chili heat.

Location: Dosa Hut, 604, Barkly Street, Footscray. Open 12:00pm to 10:00pm every day.
Phone: (03) 9687 0171

• One-plus-One Dumplings: Uyghur-licious (20)
• Bánh Xèo from Đình Sơn (6)
• The worst food in Melbourne (6)
• Phở Chu The, Footscray (17)
• Gordon Ramsay’s Melbourne Restaurant (4)

Within a few days of becoming kebab-pizza aware, I discovered that a local pizza joint cooks kebab pizza without me having to con them into it on behalf of a drunken homesick Swede (above pizza).

This version is pizza base, tomato paste, lamb kebab meat, red onion and finished with a generous spray of tzatziki.

Spotted at the sacrilicious Mama Theresa’s, 587 Barkly St, Footscray, VIC, 3011

• Bánh Xèo from Đình Sơn (6)
• Phở Chu The, Footscray (17)
• Queen Victoria Market Borek (11)
• Northern Thai in Western Melbourne: Bonus Content (0)
• Dosa Hut (7)

The great Australian side effect of Baby Boomers with too much time on their hands is the backyard pizza oven. I’m certainly not complaining. For all that grief that has been caused by Gen-X being locked out of the managerial class is now being repaid in hot, crusty pizza. Who else has the time to salvage bricks and construct or owns the property to put it on? Who else got so obsessed by Tuscany?

This is the caramelized leek and blue cheese pizza that I shamelessly stole from Y Carusi restaurant in Brunswick, Melbourne. If you’re short on leek, you can always bulk it up with caramelised onion but frankly anything sweet with blue cheese fits on pizza: cooked pumpkin, multitude stone fruits, pears, figs. I’m no purist.

In the background is sopressa, olives and Black And Gold-brand preshredded mozarella. Buffalo mozarella be damned.

Leek and blue cheese, coming fresh from the oven.

Sopressa pizza

The full spread.

• Phở Chu The, Footscray (17)
• Kebab Pizza (6)
• Bánh Mì Xiu Mai (6)
• “The only reason to move to Sydney would be to kick Bill Granger in his white-panted balls” (8)
• Trolling as the food writing (5)

Bánh mì xiu mai is the ultimate culinary mashup: a strange interpretation of Cantonese food in a French baguette via Saigon. The banh mi is your average baguette filled with a slap of pate, pickled carrot and stalks of coriander. The xiu mai part is utterly bewildering.

Picking the xiu mai from the sauce

The Vietnamese version of the Cantonese siew mai bears only the most basic resemblance to its Chinese compadre. It is both made from ground pork and is the size of a golf ball but lacks the thin wonton skin of the Cantonese dumpling. Instead of being gently steamed, the Vietnamese version is boiled in a tomato sauce.

The further that you delve into the origins and history of the recipe, the stranger it becomes. Andrea Nguyen from Vietworldkitchen hints that it might be a Vietnamese version of an Italian meatball sub and to illustrate the point, uses a modified Cambodian recipe for them. I’ve certainly seen them around Cambodia: there was a vendor in the Russian Market in Phnom Penh who sold them from an aluminum soup bain marie, in the same thin and oily tomato sauce. Graham from Noodlepie spots them about Saigon.

As far as I can find, there is no canonical Vietnamese recipe or even one that closely accords with the others. This recipe in Vietnamese, for example, calls for devilled ham along with ketchup. Another specifies Hunt’s brand tomato sauce and breadcrumbs. This lack of consistency and extensive use of more typically “Western” ingredients suggests that the xiu mai (for banh mi purposes) is a fairly recent addition to the Vietnamese culinary pantheon, even if the Cantonese siew mai have been cooked around Vietnam for millenia. Xiu mai just happened to be the most convenient word already in common usage.

This leaves the more difficult question of whether the banh mi xiu mai originated in Vietnam, and if so, how long has it been there?

If you happen to be in Footscray, Banh Mi Ba Le does an excellent banh mi xiu mai for A$3, with the bread amply soaking up the oily sauce and squishy pork ball. It comes a close second to the nearby banh mi thit nuong.

Address: 2/28A Leeds St, Footscray VIC 3011, Australia

• “The only reason to move to Sydney would be to kick Bill Granger in his white-panted balls” (8)
• Phở Chu The, Footscray (17)
• Sapa Hills, Footscray (3)
• Bánh Xèo from Đình Sơn (6)
• “It’s a minefield even for Asians” (7)