Skip to main content

Chamblee: Chateau de Saigon

Saibal recommended Chateau de Saigon to me. It's on Buford Highway in the sweet spot of the Asian food district. The decor and ambiance are relatively upscale and sophisticated.






I don't know much about Vietnamese food, but it had many items that were unfamiliar to me. They had a few standard Chinese dishes, but most of them seemed to be true Vietnamese. The waitress more or less insisted that I try this "burnt rice" dish. The rice isn't charred, just cooked enough (as if on the bottom of the rice cooker) to make anice pancake. The hot pot had pork with a simple brown/red sauce. You spoon the pork and sauce and pancake. It was wonderful---the pork was exquisite. The rice pancake was completely new to me and a real treat. I would think that the rice pancake would be easy to screw up for the uninitiated, but mine was just the right combination of textures. Chateau de Saigon on Urbanspoon

Comments

  1. I love Vietnamese food. I'll have to check this place out when I arrive in a few weeks.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eating Around Georgia Tech: Ecco

Our Texas Instruments colleague Cathy Wicks was gracious enough to host several of us at Ecco tonight. This is one of those restaurants that has been on my list for a long time. Even though it is within easy walking distance of Georgia Tech, I hadn't made it there until tonight. The menu is a combination of Italian, Spanish, and French that make use of some local Georgia ingredients. The combination of those three countries is sometimes a little forced, although the georgia ingredients (fruit, cheese) were all great and perfectly appropriate. We started out with a meat and cheese board. This actually reverses the French tradition, where cheese usually follows the main course. Everything was excellent. The Georgia cheese was a big hit, as was the French cow/goat cheese. I thought the sauscisson was very subtle and very good. The waitress said that the roast pork pasta was their signature dish, so I had to try it. It had traditional broad pasta (fresh, of course)

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b

DCA: Cava Mezze Grill

Cava is a DC area chain with light Mediterranean food. Saibal encouraged me to try lunch at their airport location and I was very happy with the experience. I ordered falafel on SuperSalad with assorted other toppings. The falafel was tasty. The SuperSalad was light, flavorful, and very easy to eat. Overall, a healthy and enjoyable lunch, something you can't always say about airport eating.