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Gordo

April 29, 2011 Drink / Family / Food / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011
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For din­ner, I went to Baloumpie Café.

I got the Sal­vado­ran Sam­pler plate — a Mariscos y Queso (Fish, Shrimp & Cheese) pupusa, Yuca Frita con Pesca­di­tos (Fried Yuca with Fried Fish), and a Pas­tel de Camarones (Corn Pie filled with Shrimp).

Oh, and I also ordered a Fat Tire, which ended up being on the house because my 3⁄4 glass­ful was the dregs of the keg. I actu­ally enjoyed it more than usual. Not sure why, but it def­i­nitely had more caramel/​coffee notes than I remem­ber in a Fat Tire.

The food was awe­some, and it actu­ally reminded me of a lot of Viet/​Asian food, except bet­ter, because it had cheese. The pupusa was light on the out­side and gooey on the inside, like bao with a bet­ter wrapper-​to-​filling ratio. The pas­tel reminded me of banh cay (which is made of yuca), but with a shrimp and veg­etable fill­ing. Finally, the fried yuca was my favorite. Although yuca is used in Viet cook­ing (we call it khoai mi), I haven’t had it just chun­ked, bat­tered, and deep fried like this. I par­tic­u­larly liked the fried fish. I was expect­ing some­thing more like breaded tilapia fil­lets, but was very pleas­antly sur­prised to find it was crispy fried anchovies.

My only com­plaint about the meal is that the hot sauce and cur­tido were not hot at all. Maybe it’s because I ordered in Eng­lish? I’ll have to spec­ify next time.

Now to eat PB & J sand­wiches for the fore­see­able future to make up for yes­ter­day, calor­i­cally and mon­e­tar­ily. I think I’m going to have to take my par­ents here when they come over. Or find a Sal­vado­ran place in Minnesota.

Vietlish

April 28, 2011 Friends / Life, the Universe, and Everything / Post-A-Day 2011 / Videos
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Tony Q linked this video yesterday:

I have to say, I’m pretty con­flicted about it. On one hand, I do want to see more more Viet­namese in main­stream cul­ture. (Do you watch Per­fect Cou­ples? Olivia Munn’s char­ac­ter is sup­posed to be Viet­namese, but her “Viet” is inscrutable. Her husband’s is actu­ally bet­ter.) On the other hand, I worry about authen­tic­ity. I give my sis­ters shit for mix­ing Viet­namese and Eng­lish. Par­tic­u­larly when they do Eng­lish con­ju­ga­tions of Viet verbs. (There is no con­ju­ga­tion in Viet.)

The same acces­si­bil­ity vs. authen­tic­ity issue seems to come up pretty often for the Viet­namese com­mu­nity. It’s the same rea­son VSA cul­ture shows gen­er­ally don’t do as well as oth­ers… we tend to swing heavy on the authen­tic­ity side, with whole acts entirely in Viet, which leaves a good chunk of the audi­ence in the dark.

Obvi­ously, a bal­ance is needed, but where is that point?

Year of the Hair

February 2, 2011 Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011
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A bad pun, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the fact that Viet­namese peo­ple call it the Year of the Cat, not the Rabbit.

How­ever, I did go get my hair cut pro­fes­sion­ally for the first time in years. It’s bad luck to cut your hair in the first part of the new year and I was look­ing pretty raggedy with my clip­pers in my stor­age unit for the last month.

Here’s a before and after, in case you were curious:

Since I was actu­ally pay­ing for a hair­cut, I didn’t want to just get a buzz. And SF weather is a lit­tle too cold for one any­ways. So I asked for the Asian part. The styl­ist laughed at me and said my hair was not going to part any time soon, and did what she could. There was a lot of water and gel used to weigh things down.

Any­way, happy Lunar New Year, folks! I wish you all a year of good health and good fortune.

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