Most expensive "broken rice" in Sài Gòn!

"Broken rice" or cơm tấm in Vietnamese is one of the most popular, favourite breakfasts for many Vietnamese in Saigon. If before "Cơm tấm" was like a morning meal,  but nowadays we have "night broken rice" for young nigh crawlers. They open very late at night, close just before the sunrise.

When I was a kid, how much I loved sitting on the low chair, on sidewalk, waiting for the "cơm tấm" vendor to open the huge container of freshly cooked broken rice, just to smell its fragrance and the other thing, also very important was the "fish sauce", I couldn't remember the taste in the old days, but remember at that time cơm tấm mostly served with typical "the egg cake", the shredded pork's skin...and that was good enough for me!

                              Cơm tấm Nguyễn văn Cừ is famous for their grilled pork ribs...

Porridge with frogs...in Singaporean style

I used to work for a mobile phone company, our regional headquarter was based in Singapore, so this small island but so well-developed became like my second workplace. Regardless of my countless trips to Singapore, I didn't explore this island well enough - their culture, their traditions and especially their cuisine!
My Singaporean colleagues or friends from time to time took me to different places for different meals. I still remember their favourite squids stirred (or deep-fried) in dark black-pepper sauce (?), simple but very yummy traditional kaya toast sandwich... and famous chicken rice at some luxury hotel! That was all my pour eating experience in Singapore!

                      The chef-owner is a friend of my friend, preparing the frogs 

Chinese sticky rice cake - "bánh Khuất Nguyên" for Đoan Ngọ festival.

I did notice this "Chinese sticky rice cake" for quite some time as I pass by the store everyday and probably because of my love to our traditional sticky rice cake. We usually call it "bánh ú" (literally "fat cake' due to its "big size", but for special occasion of the 5th of May by Lunar calendar - a Vietnamese version of Chinese Duanwu festival, the festival of the half of a year, they call this "fat cake" either "Bánh bá trạng" or more formally - "Bánh Khuất Nguyên" (after a name of the famous Chinese poet - Qu Yuan)

                   Chinese sticky rice cake or as we call "bánh ú" - the fat cake!