Day of Tripe and Kimchi

I've been eating plenty, that's not the issue. I've yet to tally how many hundreds of dollars I spent during Restaurant Week, but it was more than one. I went to both a ladies and a co-ed dinner party this past weekend, in fact, and have savored boar, rice pudding, and grilled octopus. But I just haven't sat down to write up the glory. But today was different. Today was Asian. It's much easier to write on a theme, so I regret the reverse chronological order. But a girl can't eat tripe and not immediately write it up.

After laying in bed this morning watching funnyordie.com and going to church (the Catholic one down the street and I'll boldly admit that Vatican II rendered one slightly more satisfying than another), I had to get in my car and go somewhere. The Washingtonian's Cheap Eats suggested Pho 75 in Falls Church. It's all business there: you sit at one of perhaps seven long rows of tables and have a waiter at your side after about a minute in your chair.

I got two waters (the waiters were prescient) and a small bowl of pho, a delicious soup that's perfect for winter and for ministering to most variations of a weary soul. It's a robust broth, delicate but meaty and this had a hint of cinnamon. I ordered pho with brisket, some other type of normal beef, then soft tendon and bible tripe. Thankfully, the soft tendon looked like a less-opaque onion slice but the bible tripe had the qualities I like of be-suckered octopus, but had the limp, blanched consistency of... offal from the most interior part of some animal's intestines. Since it looked like a really texturized noodle, I could easily hide it in noodle batches without knowing the difference...sort of..

In case you want to know what type of offal (to remind, that I ate today) includes the words "reticulorumen orifice," "mucosa," and "volatile fatty acids" in its description and what it looks like in profile, see a photo of bible tripe from Wikipedia below.

Anyway, lunch was delicious. I ate all the meat, all the noodles, as many onions as I could grab with my chopsticks and would have devoured the remaining broth, if the spoonful of it I took didn't make me tear up and have to dab my eyes because of the copious Sriracha I put in. I coughed like a smoker the rest of the afternoon.


Eating pho in my eyes should be following up by eating something sweet. Like a mung bean paste dessert, clearly. I'd rather not know what a mung bean is, but I know mung bean cakes are delicious. At weekend dinner party number two last night, I received a recommendation to go to Super H Mart, an Asian grocery store of which there are handful in the city. I love Asian grocery stores. I fell in love with Super Cao Nguyen in Oklahoma City, a huge Vietnamese market (super really means super), that has the energy, colors, and smells of a fair. Sometimes these smells include fish, sometimes fresh, sometimes not, which is often concurrently thrilling and reviling.

This one was pretty awesome, but full of a variety of international customers who each were operating on their home countries' rules of driving, which were almost always at odds with everyone elses. Hands, arms, carts, children, and vegetables were in constant movement. Things improved beyond the produce section, thankfully. But despite the taxing commotion, it was still beautiful.

There were serpentine Chinese eggplants...

Intimidating durians..

And very cheap chicken hearts...

A major highlight was the amount of women actively hawking samples. They competed for attention from other hawking women, distributing free cups of hot curry, rice dumpling balls, fried chicken, a sweet vinegar drink, tofu with gravy, and bulgogi beef. I tried all of those. The fish strip soup was as bad as it looks:

Note the shrink-wrapped fish below. Awesome.

I also found my mung bean paste pastry. It was individually wrapped and made it as far as the parking lot before it was devoured.

Super H has it's fair share of prepared foods, too. I picked up some kimchi, but a different sort than I've had before, with refreshingly crisp cucumbers mixed in. A few bites were enough (seemed to have as much garlic as cabbage), but it was tasty until ceased to be so.

The unidate went well.. the candles and Bordeaux wine were a nice touch. The mini pork buns squarely squirted juice on my shirt and the kimchi, after about five bites, ceased to be appealing. I love myself some Korean food, but if I am going to be involved in its production rather than solely its consumption, I'd rather just aisle shop...