One of the downsides of living in SE Asia is that if you are a beef lover.... well, good luck. There just aren't many good cows natively speaking and the imported beef carries with it an increased cost that will make you rethink your dedication towards steak pretty rapidly. All "good" beef in this country is imported from New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and if you want to go seriously crazy with your wallet, Japan.
There are other options though and it is with mostly local beef, which can be very hit or miss. I'm not going to lie, it is mostly "miss" and a chewy mess that makes you wish you had just ordered a pizza instead.
I took a gamble on something that popped up on my Grab food delivery app the other night and I had my apprehension because it sounded like it was too much stuff to be possible for $4.
It was advertised as being 200 grams of sirloin, a side salad, home made bread, and potatoes. I was initially annoyed that the potatoes in question was actually about 12 french fries but I guess those technically are potatoes. It was too late to send it back and the rest of it looked ok, so we dove in.
I was surprised and delighted to find that the steak that was included actually was quite tender and wasn't filled with the usual chewy sinewy crap that is so common all over the place in Vietnam as well as anywhere else I have been other than Singapore in this region. You didn't even need a knife but that didn't stop the shop from giving me two of them, made of plastic of course even though I specifically requested that they NOT give me any cutlery because I don't live on the street and I have an apartment here that believe it or not, has cutlery in it.
Didn't need it anyway though and the BBQ sauce that is in the little container was actually very very good. The salad was.... a salad. There's not much more to be said about that other than I was a bit turned off by the dressing being purple. It was just the usual mayonnaise crap they put on everything but this time with purple food coloring!
You can see that my little friend there was just as interested in what was going on upon the table top, perhaps even more than I was. She doesn't get much in the way of "people food" handouts from me, but I did give her a few tiny bites. When you consider that she weighs 6kg and is about 9 inches tall, I gave her the equivalent of giving you an entire steak so yeah, she was satisfied.
I will order this again. The bread was what you would expect from the picture as were the fries. But the real reason for ordering it was the beef and I had prepared myself for it to be garbage but it was actually pretty tasty and I might be feeling that way because I had my expectations set really low since the price was so low.
Let's look at it this way though, not long ago I went to a "fancy" steakhouse owned by westerners about a month ago and paid western prices for 200 grams of imported beef. It was 5 times as expensive as this per person. It was not 5 times better. Since I am quite price-sensitive in the future I will be ordering this and not the overpriced tourist stuff. I should have suspected that the fancy place was a ripoff when I went inside and there were no Vietnamese people there at all.
The name of this restaurant is simply "Bo"... which means "beef" in Vietnamese. It's easy enough to find online if you want it and for $4, why not?
I particularly like the way you mentioned "good cow natively speaking" 😂 I miss read it as good cow speaking natively 🤣
Personally, I don't know what good cow is. When I was a little younger, burger patty is the only type of cow meat I know. When I grow bigger, for the first time I tried beef strips frying vermicelli, and the beef strips springy like a salty chewing gum, I'm not enjoying it. Nope I don't hate it, I think the piece of chewy meat has lots of potential, I just can't find a person who knows how to cook it properly.
Other than chewing gum, one of the best part of cow will be the stomach. Unless due to Buddhism, majority of Chinese does consume cow stomach noodle soup.
Nevertheless, your piece of meat not look like a chewing gum, and Nadi does approve you 🙂
referring to SE Asian beef as "chewing gum" is actually a really accurate way of describing it. During the lockdown I had a bunch of steaks delivered and it was really tough to make those even edible. I found that soaking them in yogurt helps to break down the tough meat.
I understand the 200g steak portions, but coming from a meat country where most steaks are 500g or more as standard fare on any menu. Ladies steaks are generally 350g so this is literally half that. $4 is a good price as it would possibly cost you more to cook that at home. You must have a balcony at your apartment that you could grill meat outside? The salad dressing looks seriously off putting, but otherwise a well balanced meal.
I do have a balcony but grills are forbidden in the building. It's a fire code thing. We can get away with grilling on the roof of the building but it's just more trouble than it is worth.
Yes, 200g is a lot less meat than I would like to have but there's nothing I can do about that. I suppose I could double order but I didn't want to do that before I had ever even tried it. 500g of crap is only slightly better than 200g of it.
My wife and I were going to try to go to a steakhouse the other day (for me, not her), but we ended up hitting a different place instead. I have zero doubt our bill would have been over $100 for just two of us if we had went to the steakhouse. I'm glad you found a place that has decent beef, even if the other pieces aren't anything special.
I don't think I have ever spent $100 going out to dinner since moving to this part of the world. Such an extravagance is basically unheard of. Such places do exist, I just don't go to them.
It's pretty typical here, especially when you add drinks into the mix. I don't think we had a single large dinner with drinks that was less than $50.
Not bad for a $4 online order. In Malaysia, you can find a variety of beef dishes to suit any budget. Street food options like beef noodles cost around RM12-15, mid-range western restaurants offer beef dishes for RM25-35, and upscale western eateries have options priced between RM60-90.
yeah, i would order this again. The only issue I had with it was that it wasn't really enough food. In the future I think I would make my own baked potato and then it would be just right
I just read an article about how Vietnam is the most affordable country to live in for expats. Vietnam has won this award for 4 years in a row, and it's good to know that my tourist dollars will go a long way if I ever get the chance to visit that amazing country.
I've lived in 4 countries that are not my own. Vietnam is likely the most affordable but there is more to its greatness than that. It is also extremely safe. I always say that Vietnam is the cheapest SAFE country to live in, in the world.
That's true. You never hear of violence associated with Vietnam in the news, and it is on the bucket list to visit, as the reports I hear from people who've been there have been nothing but positive.
The $4 steak in Da Nang looks interesting. The salad's okay, but that purple dressing is a bit strange. Wow adorable friend dear
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