It was a lunch celebrating the fact that someone was going away and I was invited to the party commemorating exactly this. It takes place at lunch and it wasn't going to be a boozy affair so I wasn't expecting much. I know that people all over the world love seafood but SE Asians seem to like it more than most to it wasn't surprising me that when I turned up at the address that it was a seafood joint. I don't generally like looking through the enormous menus of these places and since the Viets are more familiar with these sorts of establishments I figured I would just leave it up to them. That's exactly what I said actually as I was riding by on my bicycle since there was a repair shop just a block away "just order anything and include me in it!" I said as rode by.
I should have known and do now, that this can be a terrible mistake.
When I got back they told me they ordered prawns, mussels, clams, oysters, and two hot pots and I was thinking to myself "oh, that's just fine" and when the mussels and clams went by with some lemongrass and some slight tinge of spice to them, things were looking up, but then the prawns and oysters came out.
I don't know if someone somewhere read that oysters Rockefeller are a very highly sought after dish or what but someone went too far with the putting of cheese sauce on all seafood. The thing is I am no stranger to processed cheese because I did grow up in USA after all. Velveeta, if you've even heard of it, is a processed cheese product that due to an FDA lawsuit was no longer allowed to call itself cheese on the packaging and I grew up loving this stuff. The thing is we would use it for dips or some sort of additive to salsa to give it a creamy edge. We would never throw it all over seafood that just moments ago was swimming around in the tanks nearby our seats.
These sorts of restaurants are quite common in Vietnam and especially so if you are near the beach. Thankfully, my Vietnamese friends know the spots that don't charge ripoff prices meant for tourists and even though most of the food was disgusting (by my standards) at least it didn't cost a fortune. I think I got out of there by paying a mere $12 for my part of the feast even though I ate very little of it.
The least terrible thing we had was the hotpot but even it had a strange extremely bitter vegetable in it that really didn't appeal to me. Plus it was a strange lingering kind of spicy that I don't particularly care for thanks to the chilis that were floating in the hotpot water before anything was even added to it. I had one bowl of this and when I say "had" I mean I choked it down not enjoying it at all.
The staff here were very attentive and thankfully peeled all the prawns for us. I am not intentionally showcasing this young woman for any bad reason, she was excellent and even spoke a bit of English. What I am trying to point out with this next picture is how oddly small the tables and chairs are.
She is a normal sized Vietnamese woman and you can see from the pic that her legs barely fit under the table. Mine wouldn't fit at all and this was the same for nearly everyone at our table. I'm not huge or anything but I am 6 feet tall and close to 200 lbs. I'm a bit larger than the average Viet person but even they can't fit under these tables so I am kind of at a loss as to why they do this. I'm embarrassed to say that i leaned back at one point trying to get comfortable and broke one of the chairs.
Thankfully I just slowly hit the floor and was not cut or in any way injured but later on between courses I opted to stand rather than sit down because it was royally uncomfortable.
So I learned a lesson today. In the future when Vietnamese friends of mine ask me to go and eat with them I am going to ask beforehand if the place has tables and chairs for normal-sized adults. If the answer is no I'll just tell them that I will meet them afterwards at the next spot they go to. This was one of the most miserable dining experiences I have had since arriving in Vietnam. I put on a happy face and pretended to like everything that I was eating but that was not the case at all. Also, I will never pass the buck and tell my South East Asian friends to "order for me" because while I understand that everyone has their own likes and dislikes, they apparently have no idea that these sorts of dishes are quite disgusting for the average foreigner.
We still had a good time and a lot of laughs though and I suppose that is the most important thing
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