To start, we all had to meet on Washington Ave at this Vietnamese shopping mall. I hadn't heard of any of the locations before so I didn't know what to expect. The first location where we met was a Vietnamese specialty food store and restaurant called Pho Cafe: Viet Huong. When you first walk in, you are immediately surrounded by prepared specialty foods such as Vietnamese desserts, dried meats, dried chilies, bubble tea.. The list goes on and on. In the back, there is a full restaurant where you can get authentic Vietnamese food. This is where our food tour began.
After our introduction to our food guides (the most entertaining people I've met in a while) we took our order for our first meal. Since it was a tour, we already knew what we were getting to eat but we could moderate our order depending if we had food allergies or didn't eat some of the ingredients in the dishes. For our first stop we had roasted pork Banh Mi and a crispy spring roll. We had the option to replace the pork with tofu if we wanted. I don't eat pork very often but I told myself that I was going to get the Banh Mi the way it's supposed to be made. I made the right decision.
Banh Mi is a Vietnamese term for bread and is typically made with baguette. When you think of Vietnamese food and baguette, your probably are like "that isn't authentic Vietnamese food, that's French food". Well the baguette was actually introduced to the Vietnamese by the French during its Colonial period and they adopted it in their cuisine. They do however use rice flour in the baguette to make it lighter and crispier than the French baguette.
Our Banh Mi was filled with roasted pork and typical Vietnamese ingredients like cilantro, pickled carrots, cucumber and chili pepper. It was absolutely amazing! The ingredients were so fresh and crisp and the bread was perfectly light and airy. It had the perfect amount of heat and I felt like I was eating something healthy because all of the ingredients were fresh.
For our second stop, we went to a Thai restaurant. I love Thai food. There are plenty of vegetarian options with a ton of heat and flavor. They also use coconut milk in a lot of their dishes which I am a huge fan of. For our meal, we got to try three authentic Thai appetizers.
The first appetizer we tried was Tom Som which is a Thai Green Papaya salad. The salad is made with shredded unripe papaya with lime, chili, fish sauce, palm oil and peanuts. When you think of Papaya, you typically think it's sweet but since the papaya is unripe in this dish, it tastes more like a vegetable and it so delicious! I could eat this salad every day.
The other two appetizers were fried tofu with a peanut satay sauce and corn fritters. I didn't know that the Thai used corn in their cuisine because I have never seen it in any dish before. The corn fritters were delicious though and I definitely am going to copy the recipe and make it for myself in the future.
After eating all of this food, we got to take a little break and go to an Asian supermarket. I literally almost started hyperventilating when I walked into the supermarket because of how excited I was. All of the foods that I love were right in front of me and everything was so cheap!!!!!! They had all sorts of fruits and vegetables that I haven't even heard of before and rice and noodles to last a life time! I already know that I am going back there to go grocery shopping. I could literally spend an entire afternoon in that supermarket exploring.
Our final stop for our food tour was a Mexican Restaurant. I like Mexican food but I don't eat it that often because it is typically heavy and I don't crave foods like rice, beans and a lot of meat that often. I do love salsa and guacamole though but not the main meat dishes that much. We got to try the Tacos at this restaurant. I don't eat red meat so I got the vegetarian option which had rice, beans and some queso fresco which is a Mexican cheese. The taco was made with a corn tortilla. I really enjoyed the tacos, the corn tortilla was my favorite part, they were so soft and sweet and definitely tasted like they were made on the spot.
To end our meal at the Mexican Restaurant, we had Flan. I am used to eating crème caramel which is French flan. Mexican flan is different than crème caramel; it is much thicker and is made almost entirely out of caramelized condensed milk where as crème caramel is made with whole milk, heavy cream and eggs. I really enjoyed the Mexican flan. I actually prefer the texture of Mexican flan over French flan.
By the end of the food tour I was pleasantly full and excited about all of the places that I had been. City Food Tour has other tours besides Ethnic food. They have beer and cheese, beer and chocolate, taste of Philly and much more. Its a perfect activity to do as a date or as a gift. I definitely want to do more of the tours! Here is a link to their website: City Food Tours.
Anne
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