Now, onto lunch! We had a great recommendation for a Co'm Ga (gkum rrggrrggah) place, which is a very common dish in Central Vietnam - it's actually chicken rice, but is a little different than the Hainanese chicken rice we had in Singapore, and that is available in different variations all over Asia. This place was very busy, with people only speaking Vietnamese- in fact they spoke no English there whatsoever, but it's not a big deal since they only make 1 thing - so you basically can sit down and they bring it to you without asking - although they did look at us funny, and confirmed that we wanted to eat there when we walked in by saying inquisitively "Co'm Ga????" I don't know whether the other patrons were tourists or locals, but we did see quite a few people drive up on their motorbikes and get some to-go orders, so I assumed they were local.
This is typical of how places are named. The top line tells you what they make - in this case, chicken rice. Ba Buoi (baaa boo-oy-ee) is the name of the owner - Ba is the term for Mrs. and Buoi is her name. Most food establishments seem to be run by women. The guy standing up in the back is one of the workers chopping chickens and assembling plates... here's another shot of the action:
This is what the dish looks like:
The rice is yellow due to a small amount of turmeric that is used quite a bit in the region. Sliced onions on top with chopped chicken meat, some herbs - notably Rau Ram (rrggrrow rrggrram) which is otherwise known as Vietnamese coriander (although it tastes nothing like coriander) and cilantro. Also note the large amount of black pepper on top - also common in the region. This was accompanied by a plate of pickled daikon and carrot (sorry - the shot didn't come out so well for that).
In addition to the rice and chopped chicken, there also various other chicken parts strewn within - I had a couple of kidneys, and my wife had a blood cake:
It also came with chicken soup:
Some people were eating the soup as soup, but others would take a spoonful of it and douse the portion of rice on the plate that they were about to eat.
All in all, very tasty, and a fun local food experience.... also quite cheap - each plate (including the soup) was about $1. Granted, it didn't have much chicken meat, and as we were leaving, I only noticed that some people had ordered plates of extra chicken... oh well, one problem with not fully understanding the language - here and there you miss out on some things...
