It was a lunch celebrating the fact that someone was going away and I was invited to the party commemorating exactly this. It takes place at lunch and it wasn't going to be a boozy affair so I wasn't expecting much. I know that people all over the world love seafood but SE Asians seem to like it more than most to it wasn't surprising me that when I turned up at the address that it was a seafood joint. I don't generally like looking through the enormous menus of these places and since the Viets are more familiar with these sorts of establishments I figured I would just leave it up to them. That's exactly what I said actually as I was riding by on my bicycle since there was a repair shop just a block away "just order anything and include me in it!" I said as rode by.
I should have known and do now, that this can be a terrible mistake.
When I got back they told me they ordered prawns, mussels, clams, oysters, and two hot pots and I was thinking to myself "oh, that's just fine" and when the mussels and clams went by with some lemongrass and some slight tinge of spice to them, things were looking up, but then the prawns and oysters came out.
I don't know if someone somewhere read that oysters Rockefeller are a very highly sought after dish or what but someone went too far with the putting of cheese sauce on all seafood. The thing is I am no stranger to processed cheese because I did grow up in USA after all. Velveeta, if you've even heard of it, is a processed cheese product that due to an FDA lawsuit was no longer allowed to call itself cheese on the packaging and I grew up loving this stuff. The thing is we would use it for dips or some sort of additive to salsa to give it a creamy edge. We would never throw it all over seafood that just moments ago was swimming around in the tanks nearby our seats.
These sorts of restaurants are quite common in Vietnam and especially so if you are near the beach. Thankfully, my Vietnamese friends know the spots that don't charge ripoff prices meant for tourists and even though most of the food was disgusting (by my standards) at least it didn't cost a fortune. I think I got out of there by paying a mere $12 for my part of the feast even though I ate very little of it.
The least terrible thing we had was the hotpot but even it had a strange extremely bitter vegetable in it that really didn't appeal to me. Plus it was a strange lingering kind of spicy that I don't particularly care for thanks to the chilis that were floating in the hotpot water before anything was even added to it. I had one bowl of this and when I say "had" I mean I choked it down not enjoying it at all.
The staff here were very attentive and thankfully peeled all the prawns for us. I am not intentionally showcasing this young woman for any bad reason, she was excellent and even spoke a bit of English. What I am trying to point out with this next picture is how oddly small the tables and chairs are.
She is a normal sized Vietnamese woman and you can see from the pic that her legs barely fit under the table. Mine wouldn't fit at all and this was the same for nearly everyone at our table. I'm not huge or anything but I am 6 feet tall and close to 200 lbs. I'm a bit larger than the average Viet person but even they can't fit under these tables so I am kind of at a loss as to why they do this. I'm embarrassed to say that i leaned back at one point trying to get comfortable and broke one of the chairs.
Thankfully I just slowly hit the floor and was not cut or in any way injured but later on between courses I opted to stand rather than sit down because it was royally uncomfortable.
So I learned a lesson today. In the future when Vietnamese friends of mine ask me to go and eat with them I am going to ask beforehand if the place has tables and chairs for normal-sized adults. If the answer is no I'll just tell them that I will meet them afterwards at the next spot they go to. This was one of the most miserable dining experiences I have had since arriving in Vietnam. I put on a happy face and pretended to like everything that I was eating but that was not the case at all. Also, I will never pass the buck and tell my South East Asian friends to "order for me" because while I understand that everyone has their own likes and dislikes, they apparently have no idea that these sorts of dishes are quite disgusting for the average foreigner.
We still had a good time and a lot of laughs though and I suppose that is the most important thing
That sucks. I had always heard that cheese doesn't go with seafood. They must have not heard that over there. I've actually never had oysters, clams, or mussels. My wife doesn't like seafood, so we don't eat too much of it. Maybe once a year I will have some salmon and then a couple of times a year I get some fried fish. My wife also doesn't like velveeta, so this would have been a huge no go for her. I remember one time we went to a place and a glass fell and hit the floor and broke. A piece flew up and hit my father in law. He is on blood thinners so he started bleeding and it looked a lot worse than it really was. The staff was freaking out though and ended up giving him a ton of vouchers for free meals.
There are a lot of ways that the broken chair could have made me bleed but I fell inside of it just perfectly so that nothing happened other than me being briefly embarrassed.
I am a bit afraid of seafood to be honest because I have been food poisoned a few times in my life and one of the really bad ones came from oysters. I'm more of a beef guy but we have pretty poor quality beef over here, which is a shame.
When i lived in the States I very rarely ate any sort of seafood so I can totally get how people, especially people that live in the middle like you do, don't indulge very often. Crab legs are pretty great though and we don't have those here at all because as far as I know those only come from Alaska.
Actually, being so close to the Great Lakes we have a lot of options for fish. Probably not the more exotic stuff, but you can go to pretty much any bar around here and find either cod, perch, walleye, salmon, or whitefish. I'd eat fried fish all day every day. I understand your apprehension about eating other seafood. I wish I like shrimp, but I just can't get into it and crab/lobster is so expensive I try to avoid it. The fact that my wife doesn't like any of it makes it easier to not miss all of it. During lent my buddy and I try to hit several fish fries.
O wow! your 'friends' really got you on this one, it's always risky to go eating out when abroad I think, respect you even ate some of it! Close to the shore they always serve a lot of seafood, I've been to Mallorca once and found this out and I don't like seafood at all. 😅
What did the restaurant employees did when the chair broke? 🤨 the tables and chairs don't look comfortable at all so it wasn't your fault imo 😣
The staff hardly reacted at all. It seems as though this is a regular occurrence at this place. The chairs were awful and I was uncomfortable to the point where I started to get grouchy. Eventually I just started drinking beer because I didn't want any of the food. I ate a bit of it just to not be rude and then told everyone that I wasn't hungry because I forgot about the party and ate before I got there... which was a lie but it worked.
Lesson learned at least. I am not a sea food fan and would struggle with any menu and will always just choose the fish. You are obviously too big to be a local and those tables are a tight squeeze and it is never pleasant having to sit and reach for your food because you do not fit properly.
My knees were knocking with the table the entire time and I feel like these are the sorts of tables and chairs that belong in a Kindergarten, not a restaurant.
I know this exact feeling and this is seriously off putting and I would neve return.
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