A Delicious Return to Nam-Viet

On our last visit to Nam-Viet we learned that they would be closing down for a week for renovations. Of course knowing that we wouldn't be able to go for a WHOLE WEEK meant we were super eager to get back in when the reopened.


I talked in my last post about that staple of Vietnamese cuisine, Pho. But, if perhaps you are not in the mood for a soup, there are literally dozens of great dishes to try. One of my favorites is the Bo Dun on Skewer. Its basically tender beef strips marinated and grilled around strips of celery and green onion. By itself this would be great, and I've eaten these skewers by themselves. But they come with a bunch of other fixin's. On a bed of rice noodles (thin rice vermicelli)  sit lettuce, strings of carrot and onion, a leafy herb that I cannot identify but is tasty, tomato, cucumber, and crispy fried onion bits. It also comes with rice paper rounds. I've seen this intimidate people before, but fear not - its perfectly OK to forego using the rounds if you don't to. The food police aren't coming in the black helicopters.

Should you decide to go for it I have a few tips for you, or at least how I do it. I promise its not really as complicated as I'm going to make it sound. What you get are several translucent circles perhaps about 8 inches in diameter. There are about as stiff as cardstock. Basically the process is you get them wet in the water bowl and then use them to roll your meat and extras into a nice package that you can eat like a spring roll. Start with a quick dip in the water bowl. You don't need to soak and wait for it to get soft while in the water, in fact that's the opposite of what you should do. Once the paper gets pliable it starts sticking to itself like plastic wrap. All you need to do is wet it, and it starts the softening process.

Once you've wet the wrapper, hold your hand out flat with your fingers spread a bit. Place the whole wrapper over you flat hand. Now you can begin stacking your fillings. I personally start with some rice noodles, then the meat, and then some of the celery and green onion slices and a few bits of the crispy fried onion bits on top. Place everything in the center and try to leave some slack, as it were, around the edges of the paper. By this time the paper should feel more like fabric than paper as it has softened. Take one side and fold it up over the filling in the center. Then take the other side over the first side. Now fold the ends over and eat it like a spring roll. I'm sure the the "authentic" way of doing it is probably different, but since I don;t know that way, this is what I've come up with. Sound off in the comments if you've got a better way of doing it, I'm always up for improvement in my eating technique!