Often I sit down at a table not because it’s time to eat but for the aromas that rise from the kitchens on the street or the curiosity to understand what flavor can have what on the stalls has capture my attention, triggering the temptation of trying the taste of that exotic food.
The places that I think are best to stop and eat something are always those with peeling walls, like the one where I am now waiting for a rice noodles soup with beef.
The smoke comes out of the cauldron where, as almost always, an elderly and expert lady cooks the delicious broth from who knows how many hours. Next to it there’s a table with a wooden cutting board and above all the ingredients to be thrown into the dishes waiting to be eaten.
Many times it happens to find kitchens where they serve a single specialty, usually really good. Decades of practice have made the cook a virtuoso of the only dish that you can try in his presence.
On the stainless steel table where I sit there are containers of different sauces: the ever present soy sauce, the fish sauce often used as a substitute for salt, small lemons cut and ready to be squeezed and obviously the hot pepper. Plus other liquid substances that I do not know what they are.
The Chinese chopsticks and the spoons are in the container next to it, ready to be grasped under the scrutinizing eye of the local diners seated next … will a Westerner manage to use the Asian sticks? In places like this knives are impossible to get and forks are often not found.
The wait is generally not long and a helper brings the succulent, boiling and still steaming dish. He serves me a glass of cold green tea with an ice cube that is almost bigger than the container itself, it costs just few cents.
The technique is all about using Chinese chopsticks and noodles have a particular tendency to slip away just a millimeter before being bitten.
The herbs, such as chives, cut in the dish, the meat and vegetables immersed in the broth and accompanied by the rice paste mix deliciously, all tied to perfection and flavored by adding to the taste a little chili pepper and some lemon.
The delicacy that I savor makes forget the deafening noise coming from the TV shot at full blast and from the perpetually busy adjacent road.
But it is not yet all that is on the table available to enrich the taste of the dish! A container with quail eggs and a couple of fish paste rolls placed in banana leaves to dip in the broth and, again, a plastic container with other herbs to be cut and add is brought on the table now overflowing.
The locals come and go, sitting down to eat and talk on one of the seven or eight tables of the restaurant, which in all can accommodate thirty people. Usually places like this also offer takeaway food, all in all it’s a good business!
The fan, placed on the ceiling, noisily produces air that allows us to breathe a little in this sultry heat.
Often I find places where the menu is only written in the local language, so no English, so … what do you eat ?!
The solutions are basically three …
The simplest, perhaps the safest, is to observe people at the tables around and point to one of the dishes that seems more interesting. Pointing to someone of the staff who will then serve the copy of what has been shrewdly chosen, often making an affirmative nod to whatever is incomprehensibly proposed.
Another solution, if you are a little more courageous, is to enter with a big smile in the kitchens, or where the food is prepared, and analyze the contents of the containers. Sometimes uncovering pots and pans. If you are friendly usually you always end up laughing with those who are cooking. The photo of this article is of some cooks of a small restaurant in Kyrgyzstan, who kindly and happily set themselves to pose for a souvenir photo after an incursion in their kitchens.
… point with your finger what seems appropriate, return to the table and wait …
Last solution, a little more extreme and for those who are not afraid of finding anything that can be placed in your plate, is try your luck by pointing a random line in the menu, maybe even pretending to know what you are ordering. Perhaps more audacious technique, but that often leads to excellent discoveries!
There is also the alternative solution to having a local friend that can speak English and kindly translate!
An excellent toothpick job concludes the stay in the local restaurant, before requesting the bill trying to use those two or three sentences of the local language learned that almost always make people around laugh.
I go out from the restaurants satisfied at least 90% of the time, often without being completely certain about what I ate …
