Before I get distracted: This restaurant is at 5211 Market Street in Greensboro, NC
And an apology: I was so excited by the food, I ate it before I could photograph it. I will remedy this...and exercise more self discipline in the future...probably.
Now...back to my rambling:
I know that a lot of people eat fast food just because they
know it. You know that it’s not going to be great but you’ll be full and you
know what to expect. If you stop somewhere else, it could be awful or they
could only serve things you hate…the horror!!
I know it well. I get food anxiety because I love to eat and
I hate to waste an eating experience by having something gross or even just
blah. However, I decided to stop eating fast food about a year ago (partly
because I have an allergy to soy which my body has decided it wants to
communicate to me by making my hand so itchy that the only thing I want to do
is leave everything behind so that I can devote myself full time to scratching)
and I have had so many more amazing experiences than not. What I mean is that
if I stopped on the road – the only time I really eat out – at a fast food
restaurant the mediocre experience level was 100% but the fear was 0. My fear
of a new place was pretty high (plus salt and fat are weaknesses of mine and
fast food has those in spades) but my positive experiences have been about 95%
and the other 5% were just ‘meh’.
I think Americans are generally willing to sacrifice the
possibility of something amazing to the fear of the bad. It keeps us from doing
a lot of really cool stuff. The most profound regrets I have are almost always
when I gave way to that fear not when I decided to hope for the best. Anyway,
that’s the set up. Scene:
I love Vietnamese food…okay, I love food in general…but it
is harder to be soy free with Asian food in general. It’s really, really hard
to be soy free and eat outside of your own house these days, you’d be surprised
at what has soy in it (Tums for example…) I also really, really don’t want to be
that person who can’t eat something and makes a big deal out of it. If you have
a peanut allergy that will kill you, I get it – that’s pretty intense and you
can never ben too sure. Soy makes my hands incredibly itchy, that’s my burden
to bear and not something I feel like explaining all the time, so I usually
don’t ask about food’s contents. Is this a brilliant strategy? No. But, oh
well.
Anyway, let me interrupt my digression by telling you about
this restaurant. Greensboro has really high quality Vietnamese food, it’s not
what you would necessarily think, but if you are passing by Greensboro and you
are a traveller who doesn’t know what to try that isn’t fast food, you should
give Vietnamese a try. Even if it isn’t Binh Minh.
Binh Minh doesn’t make any concessions to super finicky
people – if you want French Fries, you aren’t going to get them. If you have an
eater in your party who is fussy (like my daughter) they may have to just
settle for the cut melon and orange desert…or complain (like my daughter) and
then eat macaroni at home. My son is an excellent eater and he immediately
found the salmon, he has a radar for it. My husband is not as adventurous in
his food forays but he is also not a scaredy cat, so he ordered lemongrass
chicken. A friend who came with us ordered the Pho, which I immediately envied
when it arrived.
I got a Vietnamese crepe that was epic. I saw that you could
order one or two and I, fool that I am, assumed that they were about the size
of a spring roll or so. Nope, it’s a full oval plate omelet sized creation. It
was stuffed with shrimp, tiny corn, onions, and sugar snap peas. It was topped
with lettuce and cilantro and came with a clear sauce. I ate way more of this
dinner than I needed and as I was nearing full, the second crepe appeared. I
shared that one with the table…and then ate some more of it. It was delicious,
the crepe was so light and fluffy with just a touch of crispness.
Before I knew it, my 9 year old had eaten an entire plate of
salmon and was attempting to consume the rice by squishing individual grains
onto the end of his chopsticks and get them to his mouth. I revealed the secret
fork collection and things seemed to go much more smoothly. There was a clear
broth with scallions that came out with the food and I could have made a meal
out of that. It had such a delicate flavor, not just the heavy salt that a lot
of broths like this have. When my son was done eating (and my daughter done
trying not to have us ask her again if she was sure there wasn’t anything she
wanted) the kids peeled off to stare at gold fish and watch a bit of the world
cup.
It was the kind of dinner where even before we finished
eating we were trying to find reasons that we needed to come back and planning
what we would order. I can already taste the Pho…
For my daughter, the highlight was the paper umbrellas in
the fruit, I’m hopeful that some of the fruit might have accidentally been
absorbed through her skin to augment her only macaroni diet.
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