Culinary Adventures

So when I agreed to teach in Vietnam, I knew that the cuisine would be different. I had read that the Vietnamese do eat dog, and I expected a few exotic dishes. In spite of these warnings, Vietnam has exceeded my expectations on the gastronomic front.

Ever since arriving at Dong Thap, I have been invited to several dinners and luncheons, which is really quite kind of the faculty and staff. That having been said, the meals here are not like those in the United States. This past Monday, for example, I was invited to a luncheon by the school's athletic director to honor the opening of the gymnasium for the new year. I accepted, and rode to the restaurant in town on the back of my friend and host Tam's motorbike. We arrived at the restaurant, an open air building with plastic chairs and folding banquet tables. I shook hands with the guests, and took a seat.

The first order of business was the beer. I should add here that the lunch was at 11 AM. Any American rules of waiting until 5 (or even noon) do not apply in Vietnam. The Vietnamese love to drink, especially at official events. Everyone was given a 355 mL bottle of Saigon Special (which I think sounds like some kind of mafioso's prized pistol). As we waited for our food, I began to sip my beer, as I normally would. Every time I tried to take a drink, though, someone would offer a toast, and clink glasses. After a few rounds of this, it dawned on me that whenever someone at the table took a drink, everyone took a drink. As you might imagine, this led to a significant amount of imbibing by all.

Then came the food. In a Vietnamese meal, the courses are served in big bowls or plates, and the guests than take a few bits at a time and place them in their personal bowls. The first dish was lotus seeds, which was pretty good. Then came the peppered cuttlefish, a.k.a. squid. Now, I like calamari, and actually have enjoyed squid in Vietnam before. I've even ordered at a restaurant of my own volition. This, however, was no ordinary squid. This stuff was potent, and was so spicy that I found myself sweating. At a Vietnamese meal, however, it is polite for the hosts to put pieces of food into the guest's bowl. The more important the guest, the more food the host puts in the bowl. Being the foreigner, I am almost always the most honored guest, and my bowl was rarely empty of spicy squid. It is also very rude for the guest to not eat the food placed in his bowl by the host, so I found myself in the awkward position of continuing to eat the food that was making me mop my brow from sweating. I was happy to see the squid finally finished.

At this point Tam informed me that the next dish was crab, a Dong Thap specialty. Being a proud Marylander, I told Tam that I ate crab a lot, and liked it very much. The table was surprised and pleased to hear my enthusiasm through Tam's translation. I was quite shocked, then, when the "crab" looked strikingly mammalian. I asked Tam to explain this apparent discrepancy. He kept saying that this was crab. I finally asked him to spell the name of the dish, and he spelled R-A-T.

That's right, the main course was rat, field rat to be specific. I had read of the famous field rat of Dong Thap, so I wasn't totally taken off guard. Still, rat is rat. The Vietnamese dug in with gusto, and placed half a rat in my bowl. The Vietnamese eat half of the rat all at once (the head is removed), and then spit out the big bones. I couldn't quite bring myself to pop the whole thing in my mouth at once, so I ate it like chicken. To be fair, the rat wasn't bad. At the risk of sounding cliched, it tasted like chicken. It wasn't something that I would order again any time soon, but I decided that I would eat it again if it was served.

Which turned out to be a very good decision, because rat is what was served at the English Deparment's celebratory dinner that same evening. I thought that the second round of rat was a little overdone. At this rate, I'm liable to become a rat connoisseur, which is a heck of a skill to bring to the folks back home.