We had lunch here the other day & was so impressed with the food, we spontaneously booked a cooking class for today. It was the cheapest class we’d been to at $20/each. Most classes have been $40 each.
They have this huge community garden surrounding the restaurant / cooking class, and got a long tour and got to sample many of the vegetables & how to harvest them. For example, they harvest coriander, cilantro, mint & basil when it’s only a few inches high. They can do this anywhere between 4-10 times before they let it get big & harvest the seeds. The baby mustard greens that is their namesake is planted & harvested every 7 days.
We cooked some spring rolls – this time we put raw pork & shrimp in the roll & cooked it longer. I thought they were OK, but the sauce we made to dip them in, really was the best.
We then cooked a sweet n sour pork using diced tomatoes as the base and pineapple again, and was really excellent.
We topped it off cooking some fresh squid with a ton of spices in a banana leaf, roasted over a charcoal fire. These were the best we’ve had. Amazing. The key when we get home will be finding fresh squid.
We ate dinner at Streets, a restaurant where disadvantage youth learn how to have a real job. It was very good.
Tomorrow is a travel day back to Ho Chi Minh CIty where we’ll be boarding a boat for 2 days to visit the Mekong Delta. This trip is rapidly coming to a close. It’s hard to believe we’ve been gone for over 4 weeks so far!
millerpdx 