Eating with Hungry Ghosts

Sep 042012

Vu Lan festival

Eating with Hungry Ghosts

I won’t pretend to clearly understand the subtleties of ancient Chinese and Vietnamese traditions that involve opening the gates of hell, restless souls wondering the earth, feeding deceased ancestors, entertaining ghosts, and the like. It was clear to me, however, that lễ Vu Lan rằm tháng bảy, which occurred last week here in Saigon (and across the Asian globe) offered me an opportunity to enjoy some delicious vegetarian food. 🙂

Chinatown’s Phật Hữu Duyên restaurant

My casual understanding of the occasion is that according to traditional belief, the seventh month in the lunar calendar is when restless spirits roam the earth. Many Asian folk make efforts to appease these transient ghosts, while ‘feeding’ their own ancestors – particularly on the 15^th day (again, lunar calendar – not “western” calendar), which is the Vu Lan (the Hungry Ghost Festival). The occasion is a major Buddhist holiday and intrinsically linked to the practice of ancestor worship and vegetarianism – thus my opening to explore some interesting new foods 🙂

Our friend, Thang, helped us celebrate the occasion by inviting Hai and I to dinner in Saigon’s “Chinatown” in District 5.

Chinatown’s Phật Hữu Duyên vegetarian restaurant

Thang, our host for the evening

Thang was the perfect host!

While Hai and I chose a table in the crowded Chinatown vegetarian restaurant and began to scan the menu, Thang visited a few street vendors just outside to retreive a few appetizers for our table.

Bánh chay (deep-fried vegetable turnover)

He quickly re-appeared with bánh chay and rau câu. The bánh chay (Chinese vegetarian turnovers/dumplings) were fresh and flaky and filled inside with multi-textured veges. A nice starter snack while we considered our selections from the complex menu. The rau câu (jello-like snack filled with various ingredients) enveloping a tiny egg would have to wait to be a post-dinner treat.

Rau câu

It quickly became clear that this was one of Thang’s “regular” eating stops, so I decided to put down my menu, stop struggling to translate the entrees, and to defer to Thang’s dining choices. And it was a wise decision.

The first dish out of the kitchen was a flavor sensation. Chicken (not really), coated with a light rice batter, deep fried to perfection, and wrapped in a lemon grass, chili sauce. Sweet, tangy and spicy – perhaps my favorite flavor sensation combo. Very very nice!

Deep-fried NOT chicken with lemongrass & chili – YUM!

Now, I must interject at this point my age-old bewilderment about vegetarian chefs and restaurants. Why in the world does someone who makes their living (or more so, their moral code) based on cooking and eating vegetarian food, then spend countless hours in the kitchen preparing meals that make those wonderful fresh vegetables look and feel like dead animal flesh??? But, I digress … back to dinner.

The next dish out was vegetables – pure and simple – in look and feel, and in fact. Corn, carrots, snow peas, and a variety of mushrooms. Fresh and crunchy! The oyster sauce was ordinary, but the vege visuals were wonderful.

A vegetarian dish, prepared to “look” like … VEGETABLES! 🙂

Stuffed Duck (not) … Delicious (absolutely!)

The culinary achievement of the night, however, was the deep-fried stuffed duck (not really). Absolutely yummy. A wonderful mushroom/fungus stuffing. A convincing duck meat texture (see my bewilderment note above). And a crispy fried “duck-skin” exterior. Beautiful to behold and more so to devour.

The final dish, đậu hũ tu huyen, in fact, became my all-time favorite Chinese dish at one of my friend, Tung’s, and my regular dinner stops in Sunnyvale, California. There the dish was awesome. Here it was just okay. Tofu cubes, ground pork (not really), lots o’ chili pepper, and a brown gravy sauce. The sauce here, just so-so.