Nha Trang - more food stories

Another sunshine kind of day in Vietnam, although it was a little breezy by the beach.  As I mentioned yesterday, we had a cooking class arranged at the Lantern restaurant.  It took a little longer to walk there that we had calculated, but we made it just on time.  They didn't get going right away, so it wasn't really an issue.  There were eight of us in this room at the between the main eating area and the kitchen.  We haven't met many Canadians here, but in our group were two guys from Winnipeg and two girls from Edmonton.  One of the Winnipeg guys had his phone stolen last night, on the street close by the restaurant.  We asked if it was just one guy and he said no, it was two girls on a motorbike.  The bike stopped right beside him, one girl hopped off, grabbed him on one shoulder, and lifted his phone from his back pocket, hopped back on the bike and took off.


We all got put into cyclos, which are little bicycle taxis, and off we went to the market.  It was not the same one that we had been to a couple of days ago, this one was much more into food.  Our chef lead us through the market, stopping to buy pork, chicken, fish, some fruits and vegetables, and a few seasonings.  She was not quite the comedian that we had on the last market visit, but there was still a good sense of humour there.  she was just a little spit of a woman, and when describing chili peppers, she told us that the smaller they were the hotter they were, just like Vietnamese women. 

Ummmm, fresh seafood

Fresh chicken

Even fresher chicken
We took our cyclos back to Lanterns and shortly after started in on the cooking.  We did all the prep work for fish in clay pot, and set them to marinate for a bit, then on to appentizers.  We make fresh spring rolls all the time, but she had a few new secrets for us that really make a difference, plus a tip for our deep fried spring rolls.  After they were made we got to eat our rolls, pretty good.

The fresh spring rolls

Our chef

While our fish cooked, we sat and chatted.  They brought out some rice and we had our fish for lunch.  We'll be making this at home some day.  After that was cleared away, we did some flambaed deserts, that were also really good. 

 

Flamebaed desert

We had a very lazy finish to the afternoon, then scoured the reviews for a supper destination.  All the good reviews are for places down at the far end of the strip, but there was one we found that might not be mainstream but it was close, actually closer than we thought when we found it.  It is very popular with the locals.  The big favourite is BBQ beef, which you cook on your table with a small charcoal cooker.  It was a very smoky place with so many people grilling up their dinner, I think we were the only westerners in the place, but no issues.  The beef was so good, that we ordered a second plateful..... Two plates of beef, a noodle and shrimp dish, and a vege dish, two beers, for $15. 

Tomorrow, we have an afternoon drive to Dalat, which is in the central highlands, east of here.