The Quintessence of Ham

Calvin Trillin famously derided “con­ti­nen­tal” cui­sine, but I would argue that, for my gen­er­a­tion, “fusion” is the sin­gle scari­est word in the entire culi­nary lex­i­con. I think there’s a very good rea­son that Chi­nese food rarely involves Ched­dar cheese and Span­ish reds aren’t served with sushi: the result would – how shall I put it? – taste like ass. I’m not say­ing that we should let geo­graphic deter­min­ism rule our lives. How can we imag­ine Ital­ian plates with­out toma­toes or Thais with­out chiles? While they man­aged to sur­vive with­out them before glob­al­iza­tion destroyed their native food­ways after 1492, I think we can agree that out­come is tasty. Unfor­tu­nately, on most mod­ern tables “fusion” has far less pleas­ant results. But who wants to read about them?

Enter the Viet­namese sand­wich, or banh mi. While the vast major­ity of today’s “fusion” involves the appli­ca­tion of East­ern ingre­di­ents and meth­ods to West­ern cui­sine – think dump­ing wasabe and sesame oil all over every­thing – few cuisines today show­case the oppo­site. One notable excep­tion is of course tem­pura, famously trans­formed from some­thing Por­tuguese. Viet­namese food does an even bet­ter job by revers­ing the cul­tural trans­fer by trans­form­ing foods appro­pri­ated from the French. The basic foun­da­tion of the banh mi is a baguette-style tor­pedo roll spread with mayo and topped one or more meats, often French-inflected. Lightly pick­led veg­eta­bles, sliv­ered jalapeño pep­pers, and fresh corian­der com­plete the equa­tion. While the condi­ments are deli­cious, the var­i­ous meat options really make the sand­wich sing. Options at Ba Le include:

• head cheese
• pâté
• ham
• sour ham
• meatballs
• bar­be­cue pork
• pep­per pork
• shred­ded pork
• chicken
• shrimp cake

I’m sure I’m for­get­ting a few oth­ers. Our friend Matt really likes the the combo – head cheese, ham, and pâté – and it’s pretty hard to dis­agree. Sand­wiches also hap­pen to cost a mere $2.50; more­over, if you buy five, you’ll get a sixth for free. In fact nearly every­thing at Ba Le is buy 5, get 1: desserts, spring rolls, heart attacks, etc. It’s tough to say no with the staff eagerly encour­ag­ing excess, assur­ing cus­tomers, “You can each eat two sand­wiches. No prob­lem!” The best part is wash­ing every­thing down with a quart of Viet­namese cof­fee, served hot or cold. The basic for­mula is 1) strong enough that you can taste par­ti­cles of sus­pended cof­fee grit; 2) loaded with sugar; 3) loaded with milk. Per­haps now is the time to men­tion that Vietnam’s most famous cof­fee is allegedly made from the turds of a civet, the ani­mal noto­ri­ously asso­ci­ated with SARS.