After the grilled duck faces at our first Family Night dinner, our little posse lost some of its enthusiasm for the village restaurants. However, we didn’t give up. Surely we could find a local joint to call “our place.”
The week after Anna Grilled Duck, it was Tony’s turn to pick an eatery. He chose Europe Steak House, which actually doesn’t serve any food from Europe. Your steak options are (a) Lao, which is both cheap and chewy, or (b) New Zealander, which is expensive and worth it. The next week, Carol got to choose a place, but she broke the keep-it-local rule. In honor of her birthday, she opted to go downriver and upscale so we ate Mekong-side at The Spirit House.
Last week, Nikki hit the jackpot with Pinky Beef Pot.
Our school director, Greg, had sent his wife and in-laws off to Luang Prabang, so he bravely tagged along with us. We tentatively ventured in – past the wall mural of people eating at Pinky Beef Pot, past the Christmas garland and Santa poster, past the bar and requisite Beer Lao fridge – and stepped down into a garden. Twinkly lights draped the trees, and crockery pots on miniature grills boiled on each colorful table. Lao families and couples looked up to check out the “falang” entourage.
A waitress in a Beer Lao uniform approached our table. Almost every restaurant in Vientiane has waitresses dressed in Beer Lao uniforms, so we assumed she would take our order.
“Beer Lao,” she said.
A quick survey around the table, and we asked for two big bottles of Beer Lao and two bottles of water.
“Beer Lao,” she said again, implying that she was ONLY taking our Beer Lao order. Another waiter dashed over to fill our request for non-beer beverages.
As usual, we weren’t sure about the protocol. The menu featured English labels and lots of pictures, so we ordered beef, pork, fried rice and glass “noondles.” We started to order some veggies, but the waitress pointed to the menu artwork of the meat, which was – sure enough – accompanied by a picture of greens. Ahhh, the meat comes with vegetables, we deduced.
I’m not sure how an egg differs from a healthy egg or why eggs are listed on the vegetable page.
Like magic, our table was suddenly packed with two hot pots, plates of thinly sliced meat, ramekins of sauce and chopped chilis, bowls of fried rice, and baskets of leafy vegetables, garlic and onions. We dropped the meat and veggies into the steaming pots, which we think contained a mixture of water, oil and spices.
Then we sat back and waited. A waitress whisked away all our empties and told us to let everything cook for five minutes (although it took a lot of body language and apparently unintelligible Lao language from me to get this tip).
The Beer Lao girl broke character momentarily to encourage ample servings of sauce with each bite. That turned out to be good advice; the nutty sauce mixed with chopped chilis perfectly complemented the hot pot concoction.
At one point, we realized we were singing along to the music, a fun mix of Top 40 from the 80s and 90s. For us? Almost certainly. After awhile, the speakers resumed the usual blaring of traditional Lao tunes and Thai pop songs.
As we were leaving, a cute little girl hollered for our attention and then demonstrated her Lao dance moves. Just like we saw so often in Turkey, the young girls in Laos learn traditional dances from their mothers, sisters and aunties early on.
We took a poll and gave Pinky Beef Pot high marks for service, food and ambience. And then Tony delivered the pièce de résistance: There was ice cream on the menu! Lao people generally don’t “do” dessert. You can get yummy sweets at the western restaurants, but you can’t plan on an after-dinner treat at most local places. When the waiter brought out real parfait glasses with scoops of real ice cream, we all felt a little giddy.
This happy family says, “Thanks, Pinky!”
