Vientiane Dining

I just returned from a little side trip to Laos. I visited Vientiane, Phonsavanh and Luang Prabang and will be posting here about the best food that I ate while I was there. I am writing about my overall experience here and putting even more photos on flickr.

First stop: A muddled account of my most memorable meals in Vientiane.

Breakfast: Noodle Soup

I expect all noodle soups to be inferior reproductions of one of my least favourite Vietnamese dishes, pho. So it is a pleasant surprise when I sit down at this unsigned eatery and order one of whatever she’s having. Thin rice vermicelli noodles float in a mild beef broth topped with islands of chilli oil. A few tender fatty slices of long cooked beef jostle for space with thin pieces of fresh bamboo shoots. This unassuming vegetable, so often unappetisingly preserved is sweet and mild tasting with a pleasant vegetal texture. Paired with side plates of burstingly fresh herbs and vegetables, including carefully prepared twists of young fat beansprouts, this soup goes above and beyond a paltry pho knockoff.

Bamboo shoot and beef noodle soup 12,000 Kip ($1.50AU)
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Breakfast: Rice Soup

I like to get up early, start exploring in the cool dawn before the sun and most tourists rise. Not only does this save me from the midday heat, it sets one up for an early lunch, just like the locals.

After wandering half the city and building an appetite I spotted a tangle of chairs hidden under shading tarps, a smiling woman dishing out noodles and rice soup. Exactly what I was looking for. I’ve got a bit of a crush on congee and when I see it I just gotta eat it. Rice soup with thick pieces of crackling pork, sitting next to an elderly lady ranting in Lao, Lao coffee – bliss.

Congee and coffee: ~12,000 kip ($1.50AU)
Corner of Rue Hengboun and Rue Chao Anou, Vientiane.
Mornings.

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Baguettes for sale at the bus station (fabulous dirt cheap sandwiches are available throughout Laos, though quality does vary dramatically), frying dough, green mango salad (spicy, fishy, sweet and crisp, delicious), fried dough (I love these things).

Lunch: Laos Sausages
Inside knowledge in a strange land is priceless, especially when you’re in Laos walking down streets lined with Western Cafe’s. Double especially when you’ve decided that you want to eat where the locals eat during your trip. My friend Julia used to live in Vientiane and loves to eat, jackpot right? Well, yes and no. I visited Laos in 2005 and again in 2007 and this place has exploded, during and since. Many of her recommendations had vanished, but not sausage lady.
I followed her dubious instructions hoping they’d lead to lunch. “On that corner at lunch you won’t be able to miss the smells that come from the lady’s BBQ”, and she wasn’t wrong. Sausage lady, as I’ve come to think of her, is old, toothless and presides over a living-room type eatery. A table laden with bowls and pots and a charcoal BBQ heavy with snags are perused by a handful of customers. I join the queue, but fail to lift the lids of her aluminium pots and touch her sausages like the people before me. One man even starts re-grilling his pick of the choicest sausages.
I order some snags, a small bowl of Or Lam, a spicy dill spiked stew of mushrooms, eggplant and in this case buffalo meat (I think), and sticky rice. She doesn’t want to give me any of her chilli sauce, Julia said it was to die for, but I insisted, and it was.

I sat and ate in the living room along with two tables of office workers, all of whom chatted like old friends, and some even brought their own food. It is little wonder then that I felt entirely uncomfortable whipping out my camera and taking a few snaps.

The pork sausage was packed full of herbs, mild and slightly sweet. Alternating bites of sausage with the dill flavoured stew, balls of sticky rice and the blazingly spicy sauce – chilli and slightly sour, pounded with fresh tomato and coriander. Divine.
I ate, watching people come and lift the lids to see what she was selling, laugh with the other customers and turn their sausages on the grill. I felt as though I was invited to an enormous family lunch, delicious home style food with a smile. Even if this wasn’t the place Julia directed me to, she is my sausage lady now.

Snags, Or Lam, sticky rice, jaew: 10,000Kip ($1.30AU).

Dessert: Thai-style Shaved Ice Dessert (minus the shaved ice)

This little place is wild. Bowls of beans, fruit and textural oddities in a display case, cobbled together furniture, graffiti and motorcycle posters on the walls. It is packed with Lao families, school kids and teenagers with cool haircuts glued to mobile phones. Elbow your way into line and order by pointing from a lady who seems to be able to remember the exact combinations of countless bowls of sweets. Your choices, in my case, always palm seeds, grass jelly and some random tapioca, arrive drenched in sweetened coconutty evaporated milk (does anyone know what this stuff is?) with small nuggets of ice. I’ve had better desserts of this genre in Bangkok, but never in such a bizarre room. This place is worth a visit just for the strangeness of it all, and to enjoy a lightly sweetened textural delight.

Dessert, 3 choices, 3,000Kip ($0.40AU)
On the block of Quai Fa Ngum (Mekong River Road) between Rue Francois Ngin and Rue Nokeokoummane.
Evenings only.

Google Maps