A Fat Purple Fig

‘I’m going to regret this,’ I say to Eva, ‘because I will always remember that I ordered the Pigmund Freud from The Hungry Pig for lunch in Vietnam. And I made someone deliver it to me on a scooter in a thunderstorm.’

I watch Season 4 of Love Island USA while I eat it. In my defence (becoming an oft-repeated phrase, no?), it was 26 degrees (but felt like 30) at 7.30am this morning, and the humidity was 92%. The rain has stepped up as head bully today.

On my tour with Hieu, he asked if we often ordered home food delivery. I responded with a kind-of-fib, implying that this happens only on special occasions when, in truth, the food we order is in direct proportion to how well I am managing life. On a good day, I know it’s important to walk and to cook, to limit my consumption of plastic packaging, to resist being a participant in the funnelling of wages from delivery drivers to the Kardashians.

On a bad day, I will order a single coffee at 6am from 4km away, because I have decided this and this alone will provide me with the necessary fortitude to walk out the door.

(Incidentally, when I later asked Hieu if he frequented the markets stalls we were visiting in his personal life, he responded with, ‘we are introverts! we just order our dinner.’ I hate it when I fib and it backfires.)

On that note, much of our journey in food together has been undertaken via Grab, Vietnam’s answer to Uber. The city is filled with bikes and there is a makeshift kitchen on every corner, so the stage was set from the outset for a thriving, at-home, food scene. I assuage my guilt by tipping well, and learning simple phrases that I practice as I stand on the footpath, lifting the phone to hear pronunciations and monitoring the restaurant-to-apartment line that diminishes at scooter-speed (fast) on the delivery map.

‘Xin chào bạn khoẻ không’ (hello how are you?)
‘Xin lỗi trời mưa’ (sorry, rain)
‘Cảm ơn bạn rất nhiều’ (thank you so much)

Our first order? A bánh mì ‘special offer’ for Eva – bánh mì, steamed bun, and a ‘rice tube’, before I disappear on a tour (auto-translation can be enormously entertaining).

The steamed bun confirms that quail eggs are standard. We snack on the tube for a week. The bread is a thing of beauty, and arrives partially filled, ready for self-assembly.

‘It’s shrimpier than I expected,’ Eva states, after the first squish-and-crunch bite. ‘It is magnificent,’ I think to myself, sniffing the air. I will think about it often during the next few days. We soon learn that the food outlets here often serve one thing. Bánh Mì Huynh Hoa serves bánh mìs (and their special-offer accoutrements) and bánh mì ingredients in bulk. If you want a drink, get it somewhere else.

Total cost (including delivery and tip): $10.74

Our most-regular order? Breakfast coffees. Eva, who is partial to a double shot, isn’t a fan of Vietnamese coffee, and has instead taken a shine to fruit tea. I, however, have developed a genuine fondness (oh, what am I to do?) for heralding the morning with a short, sharp slap of caffeine and sugar, and will miss it.

Our most-favouritist order? Lychee tea, traditional coffee with condensed milk, 2 x bánh mìs (narrow – chicken and cheese, and ‘meatball’ (note: tomato paste) and cheese), and choux buns, from Highland Coffee. Breakfast of champions.

Total cost (including delivery and tip): $19.39

Pho is next on the list. There are a couple of outlets who have marked their preview images with ‘Michelin’, as a result of appearing on this list, but we are looking for something a little more neighbourhood than that. Hieu doesn’t approve of pho-tasting, declaring it a northern dish, but he definitely has a north-shaped chip on his shoulder that doesn’t match the multitude of local pho outlets.

We order from Pho 24 on Pasteur – special beef pho, chicken pho, another bánh mì (tasty, but inferior to the giant), and two flans (because every meal should be rounded out with flan). Our selection criteria? Dessert. The pho is sublime. I’m jealous of Eva’s, but don’t want to part with my own.

(Incidentally, it’s definitely pronounced ‘fuh’, just in case anyone hasn’t sorted this by now.)

Total cost (including delivery and tip): $20.93

Ho Chi Minh City Grab delivery riders, we salute you. Long may your green rain suits and iPhone umbrellas reign over the city. May you long provide its residents with their noodles and broken rice, their salted egg and pork feet, their snails and squid. May you be tipped handsomely and often.

I’m sorry about the Pigmund Freud.