Table-top grilling

One of the easiest dinners to prepare is the grill. Well, it's really one of those electric griddles, but same thing. This is a form of the popular "cook and roll as you eat" dining concept in Vietnamese cuisine, and probably most other Asian countries as well (Korean comes to mind). What are we serving up tonight? Well, we aren't using rice paper (which is odd because my sister absolutely loves rice paper; she will roll a spring roll and give it a good satisfying sniff before eating it) tonight. On the grill will be the meats of pre-sliced beef, pre-sliced lamb, shrimp and squid (at the hubster's request of course). Alongside these meats we'll also be grilling regular onion, green onion and some dill. 

(my sister thoughtfully separated the beef from the others with the onions for me)

How to eat: grab a lettuce leaf. Add some herbs (tonight we were using only basil in addition to the lettuce... at least that's the only other thing I was using). Add some of the banh hoi (super thin rice noodles) if  you'd like. Add the meat (or shrimp or squid... not me!) and some of the grilled onions. Add a sliced cucumber. Roll it all up as best as you can (the lettuce leaf serves as the "paper"), and dip into prepared fish sauce. It may get messy, but it is tasty.

50% off? Yes, please.

The husband and I were driving home the other night after a failed attempt of finding a new pair of shoes (well, my attempt was failed, his wasn't), and decided we were too lazy to cook dinner that night, so swung by a local restaurant in our Little Saigon neighborhood on the corner of Brookhurst and Hazard (to this day, I still don't know why anyone would name a street "Hazard") in the city of Garden Grove... or maybe it's Westminster, who knows.

Hoa Binh Restaurant is a little larger and cleaner than your typical local pho restaurant (but there are definite improvements in the general area than 10 years ago), and best thing is, every week they rotate two items onto their 50% off special list. Which isn't that big of a deal since we've noticed a LOT of places doing that these days, but we decided on this place for the evening.

As figured, husband ordered a bowl of Beef Pho... any type of beef pho was 50% off. I decided to go with the Rice with Sauteed Beef dish that was currently on the 50% list. And because it was 50%, I decided to splurge with a Passion fruit juice with jelly (1.99) :)

To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised. The dish was actually quite yum (instead of "just okay"). Rice was typical, and the beef was tender and flavorful, sauteed with onions, fresh green jalapenos, a hint of lemongrass and some dried red pepper. And like most Vietnamese restaurants, rice dishes typically come with a small bowl of brothy soup (usually pho-based with green onions and cilantro). And of course my yummy passionfruit and jelly drink.

Combined with Kyle's bowl of pho (and water) and tax, our bill came out to 10.36. Not bad, I'd say.