Yes, Italians have their pasta shaped like butterflies, ears and angel’s hair – but on my recent trip to Vietnam, I saw noodles in the most unusual forms I’ve ever encountered.



You can grab a hearty bowl of pho at almost any street corner (BTW, don’t call it “foe” - it’s pronounced “fur” in north Vietnam and “far” in south Vietnam.) Pho’s basic, fettuccine-shaped rice noodles are just the beginning of the Vietnamese noodle empire.

In Hanoi, I sampled wonderful steamed rice-noodle crepes, wrapped around minced mushrooms and topped with fried onions...

It was mesmerizing to watch the store-front chef pour the batter into her cloth-lined steamer then, a few minutes later, peel the slightly gummy translucent crepe off (all while holding her baby) and hand it to her husband, who added the filling, rolled it and snipped it into four floppy sections with a pair of scissors. You can see the whole process on this video:


In Hue, the last imperial capital, all sorts of dishes were invented to coddle the whims of Emperor Tu Duc, a legendary picky eater. His 50-course banquets were a parade of winsome little morsels, including some descendents you can sample today. (You can also visit his sprawling tomb and imagine him lounging in the pavilion by his artificial lake while reciting poetry to a few of his 1,000 or so concubines.)

I was surprised when one Hue noodle dish, called banh beo, appeared as a collection of 14 little bowls, the size you might use for soy sauce. A pool of rice batter had been ladled into each one and then steamed. They were topped with dried shrimp and a crispy curl of fried pork rind...

The proprietress demonstrated how to spoon a bit of fish sauce on top and peel the disks out of their bowls...

The same humble café served rice noodle batter bundled into banana-leaf packets and stir-fried. Each one was a flat envelope, a gift to unfold and taste how the earthy-green flavor of the leaf infused the pasta...

In Hoi An, noodle dumplings are shaped around shrimp, ending up looking somewhat like a flower. Supposedly only one family has the recipe for these “white roses” (Banh Bao Vac) – and the water to make them must come only from ancient Ba Le well. You’ll find the well down a narrow alley, where someone will likely be pulling up buckets of water to fill jerry cans that fuel production of this hors d’oeuvre that graces most local restaurant menus...

Cao lau, also a Hoi An specialty, may reflect the Chinese and Japanese influence on the cuisine of this old trading town. It features thick, chewy noodles, which are also supposed to be made with water from the legendary well. At its best (my favorite version was this one, at the elegant Brother Café), the pork broth at the bottom of the bowl is reduced to a rich, savory umami bomb...

Be sure to stir it all up, so you get bits of sliced pork, bean spouts, noodles and one of the crispy little pillows of fried dough that top the dish, in every bite.

Of course, there’s more, like wads of cold rice vermicelli that you tuck into rice paper with basil, mint, young bananas and grilled pork. Or the heftier rice noodles they slam onto the table at Cha Ca La Vong, the grubby Hanoi joint that serves addictive cubes of fish that you fry in a skillet on your own little brazier. And I'm sure there are oodles and oodles I didn't even try!

Movie stars, glamour…Culver City? This LA enclave a bit north of LAX once billed itself as the "Heart of Screenland," and rightfully so. Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane and King Kong were all filmed here. Today, it’s possible to visit the original Yellow Brick Road on a tour at Sony Pictures Studios.

And at Culver Hotel (which original owner Charlie Chaplin is rumored to have sold to John Wayne for a dollar during a poker game), you can sip a cocktail (or sleep over) in a landmark once occupied by Wayne, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Ronald Reagan and Oz’s rowdy cast of Munchkins.

But the big buzz is about Culver City’s restaurant scene. There’s Fraiche, recently named by the NY Times’ Frank Bruni as one of his top ten new restaurants. Even when I visited – at 5:30 on a Wednesday – the place was packed. I grabbed a seat at the bar and gobbled a quick plate of Rigatoni Bolognese en route to the airport. The intense, long-simmered sauce was rich with lamb and rosemary. And the classic French bistro décor is a nice change-up from LA zen-chic.

Then I dashed down the street (you can actually park your car and walk from spot to spot here) to Akasha. This new restaurant and bakery is the first from Akasha Richmond, a private chef to Barbara Streisand and other celebs, who is dedicated to all things organic and sustainable. No time to eat in, but I snapped some fast photos and picked up a slice of deep-chocolate tarte that nourished me as I waited in the nearly endless LAX security line.

Nearby are also dining spots from the sons of Harrison Ford (Ford's Filling Station) and Dennis Wilson (Wilson), as well as BottleRock, a wine bar and retailer, where they’ll pop open anything from their 800-label collection if you’ll buy two glasses from the bottle.

Half a mile east of Culver City’s new restaurant row, don’t miss Surfas Restaurant Supply. Chefs have been making pilgrimages to Surfas’ collection of kitchen gear and obscure gourmet ingredients (lavender powder or Emily Ridley’s Fuggle Mustard, anyone?) for over 70 years. More about this culinary wonderland in another post!

John Deiner of the Washington Post has been to the Mountain. Spud Mountain, that is – a roiling mound of cholesterol. I could feel my arteries clogging, just reading about it:

The waitress seemed to struggle with the very weight of the concoction, a bubbling mass of french fries buried in cheddar cheese and chives. When I pierced the top, steam and bacon vaulted upward through the fissure. The only thing missing was lava pouring down the sides and villagers running for their lives.

Boy, do I love great writing about bad food! Deiner is the Edmund Hillary of Spud Mountain. He conquers that pinnacle and others in a story about New Jersey diners (there are 600 of them statewide, he reports). Additional towering taste treats include Mile High Meatloaf, banana cream pie and pancakes as big as your head.

Deiner nails the ambience – if you can call stainless steel and swivel stools ambience – of the diners sprawled along Route 130. Here, he’s taking a pie break at a spot called the Dolphin:

Each time a truck rumbles by on 130, the Dolphin shudders a bit. I swear I see whitecaps in my water glass.

Ah, it all takes me back to Ernie’s, one of my favorite, long-gone joints in Columbia, Missouri. A pal and I once ordered slices of pecan pie to go. The waitress barked to the kitchen, “Pecan! Pair! Walk!”