Hội An in Vietnam openly pimps out its regional specialties with flagrant disregard to public taste, be it inferior tailoring, Vina-Franco-Sino-Japanese architecture or local food. The tourist-focussed restaurants that don’t offer bland facsimiles of hoanh thanh (wantons, generally fried), banh beo/banh vac (a steamed rice-flour wonton) and cao lau as
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street food
Oct 18, 2007 | Post by: Phil Lees 3 Comments
Pimp my regional cuisine: Hoi An
Oct 12, 2007 | Post by: Phil Lees 4 Comments
The pleasure of pork skin: Banh Mi Bi
Vietnam is one of the few places on earth that you can eat a sandwich whose prime ingredient is roasted pork skin and feel virtuous for doing so. Banh mi bi must rate as one of the world’s perfect sandwiches: crispy pork skin with a luscious hint of creamy fat,
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Oct 01, 2007 | Post by: Phil Lees 6 Comments
The Street Sausage of Saigon: Thit Nuong
It helps to be obsessed by a single dish when you arrive in Saigon. I usually hit up a few of my favourite restaurants (the upmarket street food specialist Quan An Ngon, commercial pho franchise Pho 24 anywhere about town) and then am lost in a sea of choice. There’s
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Sep 21, 2007 | Post by: Phil Lees 8 Comments
Korean Street Food Recipes: Hoddeok
Hoddeok is a Winter street food in Korea that is slowly transitioning into year-round fare. In essence, it’s a fried yeast dumpling, flattened to a pancake, with sticky cinnamon sugar centre. From a brief trawl of vendors around Myung-dong, there seemed to be two versions: one fried in a sandwich
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Sep 11, 2007 | Post by: Phil Lees 138 Comments
Korea: French fry-coated hot dog
If Coney Island witnessed the birth of the hot dog, Seoul in South Korea saw subsequent generations mutate into a an entirely new genus of animal. An animal coated in a skin of batter and french fries then presented deep-fried on a stick. After first witnessing this monstrosity on Newley
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