Street food stalls

All along the streets the local food sellers set up camp on the footpath amongst the motorbikes around meal times and serve food from little "stations". The station is usually a push trolley, with a small charcoal burner to grill meat, or cook noodles or rice. Piled onto the trolley are plastic tables and tiny foot stools, bowls for washing up, drinks etc which all go to making a "mobile" restaurant.

The lady who sets up out side the entrance to our apartments comes every Saturday and seems to be very popular, often running out of food about 1:00pm. Others in my apartment block say the food is nice and eat there regularly so this Saturday I went along, and sat on my tiny stool. I ordered 1, by holding up my finger, and received the following. Fried spring rolls cut into bite sized pieces, steamed long noodles, a mixed salad, and a bowl of soup. The soup is a thin liquid filled with cut up bacon pieces, pieces of pork, slices of carrots, and another vegetable, maybe zucchini, without the seeds. Dotted in the bowl are some quite hot and spicy bits and pieces giving the soup quite some strength. I used the bigger spoon to taste the liquid once, nice. However the second slurp, wow did the spice kick in. From then on I carefully picked out the meat and veges, mixing them in the small bowl something similar to my neighbours who then spooned the spicy liquid on top. I stopped copying them at that point...... Very nice with out the spice kick. And the cost, 40,000 Dong about $2.75, the experience, priceless!