Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Live Blogging Dinner, Part 2
Now, this place shows promise: Lac Viet Bistro, not far from that last horror show I wrote about. The place smells right. Mostly Asians in here, too, and the place is crowded at 5 PM. The menu unashamedly puts Vietnamese first, English translations second. And the muzac sucks. All good signs.
I’ve been here 15 minutes and they still haven’t taken my order, but good service and good food do not necessarily correlate. Oh, good — order taken, and the waiter didn’t speak English well enough to answer my question. This is going to be great!
I ordered “shrimp and grilled pork rice paper rolls,” which is grouped with cuon but has a different name (tom thit nuong). For a main course, I’ve ordered Lac Viet Dac Biet (it rhymes!) which is crispy shrimp cake, egg roll, grilled meatballs, grilled grounded shrimp on sugar cane served w/ vermicelli noodle, lettuce, mints & fish sauce. That’s verbatim.
There’s a white chick at a nearby table talking loudly about her out of body experience. I’ll try not to hold that against the place.
This afternoon, I went to Gatorland, and yes, Corn Dog m’dear, I had some gator ribs and deep fried pickles (because you can get onion rings and jalapeno poppers anywhere, but only a Southerner would deep fry a pickle). Gator tasted like pork, but was greasier, and had all manner of narrow, pale yellow cartlage ribs running through the meat. The anatomy reminded me of skate — tasty critter, but you need to overcome the conviction that you’re eating an Alien face-sucker.
As for Gatorland, I may be outgrowing the place. By the time I turn sixty, I’ll have certainly outgrown the place.
Food’s here and WOW. Wish I had a camera.
Stay tuned. Gotta fress.
I’m back. They forgot my appetizer but I don’t care. Dinner was enormous (and delicious). The grilled meats were yummy, and really, the only imperfect item was this fried, shredded sweet potato thing. Otherwise, yay! at least I can say I had one good meal in Orlando.
D.
In case you miss the folks, here is a comment that will bring you back: they didn’t charge you for the appetizer did they?
Deep fried pickles? Yikes! Kosher, dill or sweet? I can recall eating some fried gator when we were on our New Orleans tour. FEH!
Fried pickles ROCK! Our favourite local barbeque place serves up enormous battered, quartered kosher dills that are amazing. I’ve had gator before, but it was medallions so I didn’t notice the cartilage. Never tried face-suckers, though.
No, sis, I made sure they wouldn’t charge me for the appetizer 🙂 I felt a little sorry for them, since they seemed mortified to have forgotten something, while I was delighted not to have any more food. Dinner was that filling.
Anyway: dills, but not kosher dills. I suspect I may have kiked kosher dills better, SxK. On the other hand, I still think pickles should be cold and crisp. Is that so wrong?
Interesting. The one time I had deep-fried pickles, they were bread-and-butters. Sweet. Very addictive.
Mmm, face-suckers…
Sweet pickles, eh? I could see that.
I’m flying home today. Think they’ll lose my luggage again?
Deep fried pickles! Gag. Too funny about the gator meat. I think I had some nuggets when I was there but I thought it was yummy but it seem like we might be eating the ones that didn’t perform well.