A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
I learned a valuable lesson yesterday at a neighborhood restaurant -- ask questions before you order, even if it takes 20 minutes of hand gestures and drawing.

I took an all-too quick glance at the menu and decided to order Stewing Chicken's Legs in Chinese Medicine. Now, I know this might sound kind of strange to you. I thought it sounded odd also, which was one of the reasons I was ordering it. I pictured some aromatic soup with chicken leg meat and herbs or something.

I should have remembered, however, that the day before I had ordered "Chicken Arm Fried" and had received a leg and wing of chicken fried in a way not seen outside of the deep south these days. Mmmm, remember how great fried chicken with the skin on was? Anyway, the fact that "chicken arm" was actually the leg should have tipped me off that I might not be ordering what I intended this time.

What they brought me was impressive -- a big lidded clay pot sitting in a moat of liquid gas, which they promptly lit causing blue flames to shoot out over the top of the pot on all sides. In my extreme ignorance, I thought maybe this was maybe just some elaborate way to keep rice warm or something. Plus there was no way I was going to touch that thing, so I kept reading my book waiting for my real food to come and periodically casting alternatively alarmed and skeptical eyes at my flaming pot. Eventually the waiter figured out that I was a complete idiot and came over and put the fire out, managing to set a small rag on fire in the process.

Turns out it wasn't rice at all, alas. It was a boiling pot of chicken feet and figs. Yes, you read correctly -- I ordered chicken feet and fig soup.

I gave it the old college try, but eating chicken feet just isn't that easy -- there's very little meat on them so you have to nibble it off like baby corn. But the real problem with chicken feet is that they look just like chicken feet. They're kind of wrinkled and yellow and you can actually see something at the end of each toe that looks like a toenail. And they don't taste like anything -- not even chicken. The whole experience was a complete waste of time food-wise unless I got some medicinal value from the fig/feet combo that only the Chinese know about. I ended up eating maybe 7 or 8 feet, 2 figs, most of the broth, and cheese and crackers when I got home.

Let my experience be a lesson to you: take ordering food seriously.

© 2002 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 8:02 PM