by Honor Rovai"You wanna try some goat?"
I looked down at my red-faced husband. He was lounging on the tile floor of his great aunt's house with a group of his guy cousins. They were finishing up a leisurely dinner, telling stories over half-empty take out containers and frosty mugs of Heineken. I'd just rolled in on the back of a motorbike, fresh from my own girls' night out in Saigon's buzzing Tân Bình district. Ba Cu, John's spry great aunt, had used the upcoming International Women's Day holiday as an excuse to leave the guys at home and treat her daughters and me to bun bo Hue, the famous soup from the old imperial capital. My belly was full, and the hot, porky goodness of my meal was still fresh in my mouth, but I couldn't resist John's offer. It was our last night in Vietnam, and I didn't want to miss out on a local delicacy.
I sat cross-legged next to my husband and grabbed a spare pair of chopsticks. Following his instructions, I selected a glistening morsel of barbequed meat from the Styrofoam box, wrapped the mutton nugget in a dark green leaf and dipped the whole thing into a thick shrimp paste sauce. All eyes were on me as I popped the meaty package into my mouth.
"You like it?" John asked.
The meat was firm -- not tough -- with a gamey, earthy flavor similar to venison. The sauce and the leafy herb delivered a pleasant, pungent tang that countered the richness of the meat. Followed by a slug of cold beer, it was bar food at its most visceral and satisfying -- the Vietnamese equivalent of a crispy, red-skinned chicken wing dunked in creamy blue cheese dressing.
"Yeah," I said, still chewing. "It's pretty good."
"Really?" John said. "Because I lied."
I gulped.
"It's not goat," he said. "It's dog."
His family didn't understand much English, but they knew John had dropped the doggie bomb on me. The circle of cousins erupted in a chorus of nervous chatter, waving their hands at John as if to say "For shame!" Ba Cu patted my knee, offering comfort.
"They say that you're going to divorce me now." John grinned and reached for another piece of man's best friend.
It was a dirty trick. John knew I wouldn't try thit cho, the infamous Vietnamese dog meat dish, on my own volition. I was no wimp -- I took pride in my culinary bravery. Confident that my typhoid shot and six pack of azithromycin -- not to mention the Vietnamese obsession with fresh ingredients -- would protect me, I ate most of my meals crouched on plastic stools at makeshift sidewalk cafes, slurping noodles and broth with abandon, crunching bones and toothpicks underfoot. I'd gnawed on everything from black chicken legs to wild boar, stuffed myself with raw, leafy greens that guidebooks had warned me about, and devoured every spiny, sticky fruit that crossed my path. I'd even learned to drink my beer with big chunks of ice melting in it. Over the last gluttonous three weeks, I'd encountered only two gag-worthy foods: instant pho with sliced hot dogs (the other, scarier, dog meat) at the Hanoi airport and the mushy, oniony flesh of the cultish durian fruit.
Adventurous yes, but I'd drawn the line at dog. And bat, salamander and porcupine, too. These exotics popped up on the more encyclopedic restaurant menus, usually with accompanying drawings to help clarify things.
"Kangaroo?" I asked, after a waiter at a popular Saigon barbeque restaurant assured us that it was a house specialty. We stuck with the beef -- much cheaper, and more popular with the locals.
One woman's taboo is another's foie gras, but I just couldn't get past the yuck factor.
John's culinary line fell somewhere between dog and marsupial; the threat of a doggy dinner had loomed ever since our intrepid Hanoi-based guide, Dung, had sung praises over dog meat. Thit cho was a specialty in his city, with an entire restaurant row devoted to it. The gentle Dung smiled as he described his American clients' tearful reactions to seeing fried puppy carcasses at the local market. Given Dung's enthusiasm and John's rabid curiosity, I deemed it a miracle that we never found the time between touring the Temple of Literature and Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum to squeeze a Fido feast into the itinerary.
I thought I was safe once we left Hanoi, but John started talking dog again in the south, with Vinh, the guide who took us to the Cu Chi tunnels. Like many Vietnamese, Vinh said he hated the stuff, but told us that the dish was popular with a particular group of Saigon residents.
"Catholics who are originally from the north eat it," he said. "We joke that you better be careful if one of your Catholic neighbors invites you over for dinner. Your dog could be the main course."
John's family fit this demographic, having come from Hanoi in the early 1950's, in part to escape Ho Chi Minh's anti-Catholic regime. If my husband's kindly great aunt celebrated our arrival with a whole roasted dog, it would be almost impossible to turn down.
I thought my fears were realized on our second evening with the family, when I heard pitiful yelping from the back of the house. I excused myself and went to investigate, tracking the yaps to a ventilated cardboard box sitting on the kitchen floor. A pot lid weighed down with a teakettle covered the top. To my horror, I discovered a juicy little puppy, plump as a grapefruit, wiggling around inside. My daring rescue was interrupted when a young girl -- the daughter of the man who leased Ba Cu's front room -- came in and scooped her pet into her arms, cooing and rubbing its ears. I was relieved that John's family could be trusted with such a tempting treat.
Dog poaching wasn't unheard of in Vietnam. Stories of beloved pets being lassoed onto passing motorbikes had led people to keep their dogs tethered on leashes when they were outside. But for the most part, the meat came from farm-bred dogs raised for human consumption in conditions that were no better or worse than those of other livestock. Urban dwellers like John's family bought their thit cho from specialty restaurants or market stalls, as evidenced by the ubiquitous takeout containers from which John and his cousins were eating. The line between a pet puppy and a doggy dinner was as obvious to our relatives as the one separating my grilled salmon from the Betta fish in my aquarium.
Once I returned to the States and did some research, I could fully appreciate our family's sensitive handling of the thit cho situation. Dog is a kind of macho health food, renowned for its medicinal, "body warming" properties, including increased blood flow to a certain area of the male anatomy. Because of this, many women eschewed the stuff, leaving it to the men and their silly chest-thumping rituals. Understanding both my queasy American sensibilities and my husband's desire for full cultural submersion, Ba Cu and the cousins had used Women's Day as a convenient excuse for some gender-based family bonding. So while I enjoyed my unforgettable bowl of bun bo Hue with the girls, John and the rest of the men could get in touch with their manly selves over some dead dog.
Eating dog meat was meant to improve luck as well as virility, which explained how John got up the nerve to trick me so recklessly. But I had my own reason for letting his deception slide: thit cho was tasty, but bun bo Hue was, hands down, my favorite meal in Vietnam.
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Honor Rovai is a freelance writer and event planner living in Los Angeles. Besides her daily tennis blog, GoToTennis, she's written for Not for Tourists and the online literary journal Ostrich Ink. Her short story, Housesitting, will be published by Awkward Press in Fall, 2008. She's working on a novel set in the dysfunctional world of high-end catering. Her mother, maggiethecat, is her biggest fan (though she stepped out of her Daily Gullet role for this article).
