the Third World war will be fought with sticks and stones

Jeff Wall. Milk. 1984.

Jennifer Kiev asked me a few weeks ago what was the strangest thing I've eaten since being here. I didn't have anything to tell her. If she asked me today, my answer would be the same. 


I understand the draw of street food, the feeling that you're slumming it with the locals, that you're earning your merit badge for esoteric adventurism with every single bite you take. I suppose a part of the street food experience is experimentation, to make the rounds and sample little bits here and there until you're full. I, however, have rigid expectations for my meals. If I know what I want, I'll usually know where to get it, and I like getting full off of that one entree I originally had in mind. Therefore, I never eat dessert. And I'm not one of those people that say "the sides are the best parts of the meal." I simply make that one side my meal if it's good enough, hence the rapid disappearance of Chi Trang's chicken salad finger sandwiches at Tet. Eclecticism is for the bookshelf, not meals.


I tend to find my favorite spots for food through word of mouth or a review in some type of publication, so I'm not very experimental, either. I need a strong push to get me to a new place, because I have no problem going back to whatever joint I had already been frequenting. If I like the place, I go back. And at that point, every other establishment serving the same type of dish is dead to me. I know I should stop and smell the roses (or frog hotpots), but I want to eat, man!


Back home in Texas, resisting the call of eclecticism and not stopping at some lonely Golden Chick when you're craving a salad is a good thing. Here, I have to force myself to branch out and find new things, even when all I want is that My kho on Dinh Liet. I was in a touristy part of town and thought I could do some good people watching while trying out a new spot, so I settled at the main bend on Ma May. I didn't really settle, but was lured in by a young chap with lightly dyed bangs and a Louis Vuitton button up. Concerning high fashion Italian clothing here in Vietnam: if you can read who made it from more than two feet away, rest assured, they didn't make it.


He hooked me in with a friendly demeanor and overall good customer service, pointing me to an empty stool in which I could sit. What the hell, promoting and rewarding good customer service in Vietnam can be one way I'm leaving the nation better than how I found it, so I obliged and stayed.


I sit down on a blue stool about five inches off the ground and look at their framed menu on a brick wall: pho xao, my xao, com. I choose the pho xao, a dry noodle dish with beef and greens.
To my left, I hear what sounds like French. I look over and see two men with athletic builds and of African descent, sitting back (figuratively), drinking some red soda, taking in the scenes of the frenetic street which lay a foot away off the curb. I'm a little curious about the two gentleman, so I ask them how long they've been in Hanoi and things of that ilk. He said, in English, about two years, and something about Ninh Binh, and soccer. His English was heavily accented, but I didn't want to get into one of those constant "what did you say?" conversations, so I just nodded my head and went along with things. I couldn't even discern his name. I saw a couple of the employees at this particular food stall, as well as from across the street, come up and ask them a few things in Vietnamese. Well, the Vietnamese he shot back was clearer than his English, so I didn't know what language to use from that point on. 


The cooks had two massive woks fired up, one cooking thinly sliced beef, the other frying dua, a bok choi or cabbage like green (I don't know the English equivalent). They were prepping for the busy night that lay ahead, as there were only three customers at the moment, and I was the only one that hadn't eaten. It was about 8 o'clock. The kitchen was open air, yet I could still feel all of the steam from the stir fry billowing in my direction. Vaporized garlic and charred beef flesh formed a formidable fog, a hot blanket of flavor providing me the best appetizer possible. It didn't take long for me to hit the point where I stopped minding the heat and just started to accept that I was going to sweat. Just as I did, however, the young cook put a giant lid over the woks, trapping the nuclear fission. 

The stool I sat on had a warped leg. I had to lean forward to not fall backwards. A young girl, about a year and a half, wearing a stained white cotton dress, walks in between the soccer player and I. She's doing a fancy little walk, obviously trying to get our attention. She hops off and back onto the curb while using her arms for balance like a little Nadia Comaneci, garnering applause from the men around her. She's on the curb and is about to turn back around to start all over again, as young children are wont to do when they've got an audience, when I hear a loud boom over in the direction of the kitchen. "It was a sound, like a garbage truck, dropped off the Empire State Building." A metallic crash, near deafening, reports straight from the woks, and I snap my head over to the right and see the lid on the dua flying up about two feet in the air. The green leaves shoot off the wok in slow motion like tossed lettuce in a salad dressing commercial. Heck, I knew it was hot in them woks, but this is a little surprising.

Jeff Wall. Untangling. 1994

Of course I'm transfixed, and in moments like this, when calamity strikes, half a second creates an hour of memories. I'm staring right at the woks, looking to see what other fireworks lay in store, when the cook jolts himself back, blocking my view. I inch my head over to get a better view, when I see an orange stone the size of a softball fly into view. It collides with the wok containing the beef, tipping it over, spilling about a third of the meat onto the street. In the middle of the street, two boys in a white scooter, about the same age as the cook and the maitre d', hurl another stone. I see it hit the backsplash of the kitchen, with the cook using his arms to block his face. Seeing the scooter kids are likely out of ammo, he sprints toward his enemies like a greyhound gunning for the stuffed bunny. A couple of feet in front of him is the pile of beef, resting in its own fat and the cooking oil's. Clearly too furious to see it, he slips and trips face first, deftly blocking his face from the pavement with his palms. With the grease beneath his palms and feet, he's running stationary in the stack of meat like he was in a Tom and Jerry skit, but is quickly able to gain traction and book it for the perps. I'm not sure if the scooter had a hard time accelerating or if the cook was that quick, but he catches up to the boys and gives a few swift kicks with his left feet to the engine cover. The scooter is able to accelerate and speeds off beyond the bend, the cook having no problem keeping pace. The trio speed off into the night as abruptly as they had met.


I look over at the soccer player, and his mouth is halfway open. He turns to look at me and I probably had the same look on my face, so he lets out a chuckle and starts nodding his head. The presumed owners of the kitchen, a man and woman likely in their late 40's, are boiling.


(in Vietnamese)
"Who are those boys?"
"How am I supposed to know? I'm going to stab them in the head the next time I see them!"
"How are you going to see them if you don't know who they are?"
"Well they better not come back here!"
"If they come back here, I'm going to stab them in the head!"
"Who are they?" looking at one of the employees.
"I don't know who they are!" he shouts back, gesturing heavily with his arms.


There's plenty more that was said, but in times like these, I am very glad my Vietnamese is as limited as it is. The male owner slams his hands on a table, his long bangs shooting up from the air the impact created.
"Kill 'em!"


"This isn't common, is it?" I ask the soccer player.
"I have not seen stones like this," he informs me, "but the Vietnamese. So angry. So angry. Always fighting!" Meanwhile the owners are still ironing out the situation, screaming as they're doing it, understandably very bothered. 
"I always see hands fighting on the street, but never stones before," he tells me as he keeps an eye on the owners.
"I'm going to smash their scooter the next time I see them!" the lady owner shouts, to nobody in particular.


The young cook who trailed the scooter comes back into view, casually walking with a lit cigarette in one hand. 
"Boy, did you get 'em?" the lady asks.
"What, you didn't see me dent the scooter right here?"
"How could you expect me to see? I was ducking," she shoots back.
"Well while you were ducking, I got them. And down the street, I got them, too."
"Who were they?" the male owner shouts.
"What makes you think I would know?" he asks incredulously.
"They look like your friends!"
"My friends don't throw rocks at me!"
The talking gets a little fast at that point, with a lot of finger pointing, hair flapping, and diagonal eyebrows.


The soccer player lets out a big sigh.
"I look at the food and thought it explode," he tells me, echoing my thoughts exactly. 
"I don't know why they do it this way, with all the fighting," he continues. 
Who knows the story really, but either the snipers had really bad aim, or only wanted to hit the woks for a non-violent, demonstrative surgical strike. For a split second it felt truly violent, but I had to take a step back and see that they were only rocks. Nobody is armed here, not even the policemen. I felt very safe at that moment, remembering this. From the looks of the cook's pinky as he's taking drags off his cigarette, the only casualty was about a millimeter of skin.


"Why you not help us?" the male owner interrupts as we're talking.
The soccer player chuckles a bit. "I did not know what was happening!"
"You could kick the boy for us," the male owner says, pantomiming one of those soccer kicks where you strike the ball with the inside of the foot.
"I told you I kicked him already!" the cook shouted. For emphasis, he demonstrates that exact same kick. 
The soccer player, the cook, and the male owner stand in a triangle, discussing how the cook got his kicks in, all the while comparing proper form and technique of the kick.
"Are you sure you got some kicks in?" asks the male owner.
"Ask him," the cook motions to the soccer player. "Ask him if I got some kicks in."
The soccer player nods his head, looking at me, the owner, the cook, and back at me, laughing. They still kick the air during the discussion.


"Your food will be done soon, don't worry," the lady owner tells me. 
"It's fine, don't worry about it. Has this happened here before?" I ask.
"Not at all."
I wondered if that remark was in the best interests of her business, or if it was actually true.
"Boy, did you get any kicks in?" she asks over my shoulders.
"If you weren't so scared, you would have stuck your head out to see me smashing in the scooter!" the cook screams back.
The lady owner smirks and mops up the beef and fat off the pavement, or really, their restaurant floor. 
"Teach him how to kick so he can protect us next time," the male owner demands of the soccer player.

"What are you going on about?" the cook exclaims in disbelief. It's all becoming pretty funny to him, too. A few minutes after the little fiasco, everyone is sitting back and able to have a good laugh about it. I get my pho xao, topped with the same greens and beef that had been cooking in the wok. Maybe it was the goal of the assassins to kill all of the flavor in that restaurant's food, because my dish was disappointingly bland and tasteless. The pickled daikon couldn't really rescue it, either. I guess I should return on another day to give it a fairer assessment. An angry cook is a bad cook, they say.

Jeff Wall. A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai). 1993