Com: quick, cheap lunch.

Vietnam seems filled with lunch time eateries serving a variety of pre-cooked meals with steaming hot rice. A few days ago we waddled down this street, full of pho and banana fritters and saw a roaring trade at two side-by-side com joints. I knew we had to return.

And return we did. Between 11:30am and midday seems the best time to eat. This place was full, new steaming bowlfuls of dishes being brought to the front from a hidden kitchen.

After discussions (me in english, them in vietnamese), little plates of vegetables and pork and a big bowl of green soup lands on our table. We clean our chopsticks and spoons and wait for the rice. And wait. I take little tastes, and wonder if our waiting is in vain, have I even managed to order any rice?

I see a few other lone diners around the room playing this same game, little tastes, holding back, waiting for the real lunch to begin, because you can’t eat this food without rice.

Finally it lands and we dig in. There are soft sheets of saffrony potato, garlicy green vegetables and roasted pork so delicious I could have eaten a triple serve. Felix said “this pork is amazing, just like a licorice allsort!”. And it was. Layers of meat and juicy fat topped off with a delightfully crisp, shattering skin. So fatty but not tasting of fat, or cloying in the least. This roast pork was so delicious that it deserves two photos.

Minutes later we have finished eating. I have managed to make a baby cry (real tears, too), and we are paying our 40,000d ($3.20AU), and leaving.

Com Joint
Yen Phu Rd
just opposite Sofitel Plaza Hanoi.