Vietnamese Food

If you're here, you're on the wrong side of the street. Go back down that underpass and exit on the other side, which is exit number 2.

This is the place!

Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup. Yummy!

After eating nothing but authentic Korean food for the past 6 months, I was now in the mood for something different. As much as I love Korean food, my recent trips to Hong Kong and to Japan made me realize that I had missed all the wonderful variety of different ethnic foods I was used to eating before coming here to South Korea. As luck would have it, I read about an authentic Vietnamese restaurant not too far from where I live from another blogger. You can read the original blog post yourself here:

http://leeskoreablog.blogspot.com/2010/02/vietnamese-beef-noodlesdieu-hien-quan.html

Excellent directions on how to find the place are also there are well. Although, I would only change one thing about those directions, get out at exit number 2 instead of exit number 1. At exit number 2, you are exactly where you need to be after the bit about using the underpass. The rest follows as written.

On a saturday a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go out and actually find this particular Vietnamese restaurant. A fellow teacher friend of mine, along with his kids, were there along with me for the experience. I had successfully convinced him a few days prior to our trip out there that "real" ethnic foods were very difficult to find in South Korea and that most ethnic foods here were "Koreanized" versions of the real thing. He seemed to agree with my assessment.

The drive out there was much farther and longer than I had anticipated. It took a bit over an hour and through many toll roads later, and stopping to ask for directions a few times, we finally arrived. But, it would have taken even longer via subway. Ansan is farther than I had thought even by car. The restaurant itself was typical of authentic places; not at all fancy and very down to earth. The clientele was mostly Vietnamese as was the writing on the menus and on the walls (with Korean translations, of course). A good sign.

The food was everything I had hoped it would be; the real deal. I had beef noodle soup along with spring rolls and iced Vietnamese coffee. The cilantro was already in the soup and the bean sprouts and the lemon grass was on a separate plate as it should be for you to add to your own soup as you like. The only things missing were limes (they gave us lemons instead) and basil. A few minor details that did not detract too much at all (although limes do taste better and basil is not really missed by me). I made a slight mistake with the spring rolls, though, and forgot to mention the deep frying part. They were cold rolls. But, very, very, good none-the-less. My friend had the same and his kids had soup and fried rice. The fried rice was better than what I had had before.

For coffee lovers, Vietnamese coffee is the best in my opinion. But, only if you like strong coffee and/or sweet coffee. They use these small individual cup-sized filters that drip into your cup at the table and fill your small cup in less than 10 minutes. The milk is sweetened condensed milk and when mixed with the coffee is simply awesome. You can have it either hot or cold. I like it cold. Cold is simply poured over ice. I had given up coffee many years ago as a daily thing, but I do have it once in a while. It was a nice treat.

Cost wise, the food was very reasonable. Four of us ate and were stuffed for less than KRW 50,000 (that's less than CDN$45, or US$40). Everything was authentic in taste and simply awesome. Definitely a place to go back to again.

Highly Recommended.

Name and Location: Dieu Hien Quan, Ansan Subway Station, Exit Number 2. Telephone Number: 493-3756.

Note: All pix courtesy of Lee's Korea Blog (http://www.leeskoreablog.blogspot.com/) and used with permission. I was too engrossed in the company and in my food to think of taking pix this day. Next time. Duh!