Yes, this is an expat, backpacker, nomad blog and here’s a dirty little secret: I am really sceptical about the vast majority of expat pages or blogs. If you are one of those special people that actually run a good one, I salute you.
One day, I shall write a full length article to discuss the matter in further depth but to cut straight to the chase; the fact that many of these websites exist only to allow foreigners that own bars, cafes and restaurants to endlessly pat each other the back; regardless of whether their places are actually decent or just mediocre. Many of these websites are dead; as creating content on a regular basis isn’t easy and if you run a restaurant you’ll always make more money dedicating your marketing work towards local consumers. If you run a website, don’t quit your day job.
There is of course, a solution to the expat media problem anywhere in the world and that is to skip their BS and just read whatever the locals read instead. Unfortunately my Vietnamese is not yet at the level where I can effortlessly glide through Zody or Foody.vn and read all those reviews. TripAdvisor is also a good international alternative, but it’s non-localised manner is what often ruins it; you’ll often have to scroll through pointless rants from overly entitled foreigners about how Vietnamese people don’t put normal milk in their coffee until you see anything that can ever be taken seriously.
For those that struggle with the Vietnamese language, Instagram pages offer a way to spot a good place without struggling to read too much. The picture will do most of the talking. There’s the automatic translate feature and you’ll probably able to read the address yourself.
That’s exactly what I did. I added @ryanfoodaholic on Instagram and followed his posts. He had recommended an absolute beauty of a small local spot that mainly specialised in offering a bánh mì baguette with beef and an egg on a sizzling plate. I had been waiting to sample this dish known as ‘Bó Nè’ for a very long time; it is here that I should confess that until today, I had never realised that this was actually a breakfast dish.
Foolishly, I had walked past this spot previously several times during lunchtimes, falsely believing that it was closed. In fact, it only operates between 6 and 11 am. It is strictly a breakfast only spot, a small restaurant that was so packed that locals could also be found dining across the road, outside on the street. That was a promising sign.
What else seemed strange (for me) was that upon arrival, there was no menu or price list to be presented. This felt awkward like one of those times where you’ve mistakenly stepped into the wrong kind of place for a ‘massage’ and it is soon made clear that there will be no small talk about options or prices, you’re politely asked to sit down and they will just bring in the star of the show to start the main event very quickly; leaving you with no time to anticipate what kind of perverse pleasure may be coming to you. In this case, it was not to be a horny, divorced, middle-aged single mother caked in excessive amounts of make up, but the meat.
Usually when presented with such an awkward dilemma, I will make my excuses and quickly head for the exit before temptation can take hold; but in this instance I carried on with doing to dirty deed and proceeded to devour the beef, the meatball, the paté and the fried egg. Lettuce and cucumber were provided on a separate plate as a token effort to convince that this dish is not just some indulgent kind of dirty delight and is in some way or another, slightly healthy.
At just 60,000 đ, it is definitely cheap enough to eat on a daily basis, but that doesn’t mean that you should. Still, you can’t help but wonder why expat pages seemingly refuse to discuss such tasty local dishes. It could be guessed that it is probably because if we knew about such good stuff, we wouldn’t bother paying over the odds at their mate’s restaurant; we’d all head to places such as these for our weekly steak and eggs breakfast instead.
Ironically, this place was close to another spot that @ryanfoodaholic had recently mentioned. I won’t talk too much about that as you could just check out his Instagram if you really must know, but I did stop off to pick up one of those delicious 6,000 đ banana cakes to take home.
The moral of the story is that you should ideally consult with local sources whenever it is possible. Locals who have been around longer tend to know what tastes good, what a reasonable price is and aren’t afraid to call out a place for being of low quality. They cannot easily be deceived and have a larger collective voice. What’s more, they tend to go beyond the obvious. If something is new, they’ll talk about it first. Listen to them, you’ll be surprised at what you may find.
Đà Nẵng Diaries 