Wrap & Roll

You remember my post "from the Hell to the Heaven"?
It seems no lines between street food and food served in fancy restaurant.

Wrap & Roll is the same. Easy to buy from street stall as a quick meal.
And we order it in the restaurant with curiosity, how good they are in fancy place ?

Wrap & Roll. It's about many dishes when we eat or prepare, we put some filling on rice paper (bánh tráng). Then we wrap! We roll! We dip it in sauce! And we enjoy!

Most famous. Most desirable. Our fried spring roll. We call "chả giò" in the south, "ram" in central and "nem"  in the north! I don't know why "spring" ? It would originally come from our big neighbor!

Deep fried spring rolls (chả giò) 

Variation of fried spring roll in Quảng Ngãi - ram! 

 The fillings for deep fried chả giò is usually a  mixture creatively imagined by the chef!
 What to put ? How much to put ? What kind of rice paper ? It makes different!

Street snacks - bicycle ride to discover - Part Four

Sàigòn is changing, a lot!
My old Sài gòn was quiet, more peaceful, more calm and charming!
Sài gòn today is vibrant, joyful, full of good and evil!

One afternoon, I got time and decided to ride on my very good bicycle around the city. To see, to feel and to smell new things that I probably pass by in my routine day!

Heading to district 10, where I often see many stalls of grilled sweet potato, I catch no one. Still early for business? Grilled sweet potato reminds me a winter day in Beijing, when I was on the way to Great Wall. It was really freezing morning, sitting in the bus, through the window, I bought a grilled potato from street vendor!

I follow the stream of cars, motorbikes to Cách Mạng Tháng Tám street, then turn to Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai street to check my favorite Vietnamese kebab but it's closed when I reached there!

No kebab, I stop by a stall of fresh fruit juice - opposite, to quench my thirst with pomelo juice. It was small place before, selling mostly orange, pomelo, centella (rau má) juice. Now bigger stall, richer choice!

Stall of freshly squeezed fruit juice 

I'm impressed by the number of fruit juice they have here. Freshly squeezed juice from apple, pomelo, mango, pear, water melon, centella (rau má) to carrot, winter melon (bí đao), star fruit (khế), aloe vera (nha đam)...I just wonder do they mix with water? or purely squeezed fresh juice? Business secret? 

Whatever you name, they have here! 

The pick of the month! (món của tháng!)

What I'm going to share with you - may not be considered as street food in Sài gòn, but it could be found somewhere in Central area, exactly where ? I'm probably not a right person to advise, but I feel a rush to share this special wrap&roll dish with you!

I got from friend, after his comeback from holiday in his hometown, a bunch of big rice paper with sesame. "Ok, what I can do with this one?" I asked him. He said "You dip it into water, when rice paper becomes soft, you wrap with SPRING ROLL, BOILED EGG, COOKED PORK, VEGGIES, then roll and dip into a fish sauce mixed with ground peanut. All sounds quite new to me! I said "OK, will do!"

Special wrap & roll dish with sesame rice paper which becomes soft, chewy after a dip in water!