Tag Archives: Family Night

Final Family Night – Lao Kitchen

June 16, 2011 Sharon Leave a comment

It’s with a heavy heart that I report on our last Family Night dinner here in Vientiane. As the day approached, we wracked our brains to pick a restaurant worthy of this momentous occasion. Nikki researched a dinner cruise on the Mekong, but most feedback suggested health-and-safety standards were questionable. (After all this time in Asia, I wouldn’t know a health-and-safety standard if it punched me in the face, but I did wonder whether chartering a boat for four people would really be all that fun.)

We finally settled on Mak Phet, a lovely little joint that trains street kids to work in the restaurant industry. We had all been there before and savored several of the delicious Lao dishes. Carol and Nikki arrived at the restaurant first and discovered the menu had changed. Nothing sounded good enough to warrant the unusually high prices, so we held a quick family meeting and moved the party to my favorite restaurant in town: Lao Kitchen.

Lao Kitchen is owned by Noy, a woman who used to work in our school canteen. She and her staff prepare fantastic Lao food bursting with fresh flavors. Some of my favorite dishes include chicken wrapped in pandan leaves (which comes with a to-die-for citrus/chili sauce), curry with tofu, stir-fried morning glory (with an insane amount of garlic), basil stir fry, ginger stir fry and any other stir fry. You almost can’t go wrong. The only thing I didn’t love at Lao Kitchen was the crispy pork (no, it’s nothing like bacon), although I didn’t try the duck bills (been there, done that) or the “chicken knees and elbows.”

That’s Noy in the black t-shirt.

We asked one of the lovely servers to take a photo. Maybe it was her first time?

Carol enjoys a watermelon shake.

Living so far away from home, we often find ourselves craving familiar comfort food like burgers or mashed potatoes or big salads with fancy candied nuts. It’s easy to get bored with the local cuisine; no matter how much you love it, you can only eat so much sticky rice. In Vientiane, we can choose from Italian, Turkish, Chinese, Mediterranean, Indian, Belgian, Thai, German, French, Mexican (well, it’s really more of a brothel), and countless other ethnic culinary options. But I have found myself sipping a cold Beer Lao to wash down that spicy Lao Kitchen curry probably once a week since it opened. That’s a real testament to how fab (and cheap) this place really is.

But I saved the best for last: mango with sticky rice and coconut milk. Possibly the world’s most perfect dessert. It sounds so simple, and yet I have goosebumps of joy as I write this.

Following our final Family Night dinner, we all motored to Walkman Village, a treasure trove of imported knock-off designer crap. We tried on swim caps with Nikki and helped Carol pick out a Prada bag for her teaching assistant.

Finally, we wrapped up the night with Stupid Sticks, an addictive card game Nikki brought from Saskatchewan.

No, that’s not a meth lab. Tony’s crashed on the mattress in our living room and the girls are drinking out of plastic kegger cups because the movers hauled away all our stuff this week.

Daily Life, Laos

You can’t make a silk purse – or a Family Night – out of a sow’s ear

March 19, 2011 Sharon 2 Comments

Family Night a couple weeks ago had it all: mystery, humor, plot twists and even a celebrity guest!

Nikki had chosen a local restaurant but couldn’t really tell us what or where it was. And if that wasn’t exciting enough, we had invited Yoga Lily, who was back in town on a Thai visa run. As usual, we all met at our house and formed a motorbike convoy to dinner, with Nikki leading the way.

At the small shady restaurant, we were greeted by the ubiquitous beer server. To our surprise, (a) the Beer Lao girl was actually a CARLSBERG girl, and (b) she spoke some English. “Do you want Beer Lao or Carlsberg?” she asked, gesturing toward a cooler stocked with green bottles.

Nikki confidently whipped out a translated list of our usual requests. Something to the effect of, “Please bring us five of your best dishes. No bones, blood or faces and no coriander.” The Carlsberg girl explained that they didn’t have an actual menu, per se. They only served a collection of Lao snacks. Hmmm… if we ate enough snacks, that would constitute dinner, right? Tempting … for about 5 seconds. Then we saw what the snacks were: grilled pig ears, grilled pig intestines and large salted fish.

After finishing our beers, we motored to a previous Family Night haunt – Pinky Beef Pot. I think Lily was sufficiently impressed.

Daily Life, Laos

Family Night – Soundara Restaurant

February 17, 2011 Sharon Leave a comment

Well, this story is getting a big stale, eh? If you’re new to Family Night, here’s the scoop: Tony, a couple friends (Carol and Nikki) and I take turns picking a local restaurant for dinner once a week. By “local,” we mean nearby and geared toward Lao customers.

This week’s Family Night restaurant had all the requisite components: twinkly lights, yellow Beer Lao-sponsored restaurant sign, karaoke, indecipherable menu, no English speakers on staff, and friendly fellow diners. Carol had chosen the open-air Soundara Restaurant, a little joint just a couple meters off Tha Deua, one of Vientiane’s main thoroughfares.

We grabbed a table overlooking the motorbike parking area (really just the shoulder of the road), where the bored parking attendant and a little boy played with battery-operated dinosaurs. The roadside restaurant’s location explains the gritty film on the tabletop, but there’s no excuse for the nails poking out of my chair that nearly shredded my jeans.

Before we could say “Beer Lao,” the ubiquitous refreshment appeared on the table. Ordering food, however, proved a bit more challenging. One waitress fooled us with her confident use of English numbers and animal words. We tried to order random dishes, so we said – and she repeated while scribbling on a pad – “One chicken, one fish, one shrimp, one fried rice” and so on. She scurried away, and we waited. And waited. Finally, she returned with three other waitresses and the busboy, who all chattered at us in Lao despite our humiliated laughter and our insistence, in Lao, that we didn’t understand.

At that point, it was time to call reinforcements. Nikki dialed our Lao friend Addie, who answered the phone with “I’ve been expecting your call.” Nikki handed her phone to the restaurant staff, who huddled around the telephone to record our order.

In the meantime, we all continued to sing along with the men at the next table to the Thai pop songs (and occasional English-language tune) playing on the karaoke screen. This place was clearly unprepared for a band of western songsters: they played neither Mariah nor the Eagles, much to our disappointment.

More disappointment came with the food. The soup cleaned out my sinuses, but the fried chicken comprised mostly chunks of cartilage and the veggies were uncharacteristically bland. Just as we were ready to write off this place for good, the fish came out and rocked our world. Usually restaurant fish here is literally just a fish: intact and grilled. This one had been dismantled, mixed with some herbs and spices, breaded and deep-fried. Bring it on!

The verdict? Pleasant enough ambiance, mediocre food, interesting karaoke selections, monolingual but undeterred servers, and Vientiane’s most tasty fish.

All Family Night photos this week are brought to you by Carol.

The English faker.

Bored parking attendant.

Dinosaurs alleviate the boredom.

Tony supervises the frantic food ordering.

Heading off to get ice-cream.

Daily Life, Laos

Family Night – NeNaTa Restaurant

February 13, 2011 Sharon 1 Comment

You can make a lot of safe assumptions when you peek in a Vientiane restaurant to check out the clientele. Mostly Lao people? The restaurant probably serves cheap, delicious, spicy Lao food; the menu most likely won’t include English descriptions of the dishes; and if you don’t speak Lao, you shouldn’t try to place special orders. Mostly expats? The restaurant probably tailors its dishes to our less adventurous palates; the menu likely features illustrations and/or sometimes-decipherable English descriptions; and you can usually find someone who understands your Lao/English/Body Language special requests.

That’s why we felt a bit sorry for the couple who were strolling along the Mekong River, saw our group hanging out at NeNaTa Restaurant on Wednesday and clearly thought to themselves, “Hey if those white people are eating there, it must cater to westerners.”

Ha! Little did they know that it was Family Night! As usual, we ventured out to find a local joint in our neighborhood. It was my turn to pick the place, and I chose this riverside restaurant that you can’t access from the main road. We had to maneuver our motorbikes past the barricades blocking the dirt road that runs along the Mekong from our village to downtown Vientiane. The road is under construction as part of a massive flood-management project. NeNaTa Restaurant is the only eatery along this stretch of road, and we were the only customers (until those other poor saps showed up).

As expected, the menus were devoid of English, and the staff were friendly but monolingual. I called our Lao friend, Lae, and handed the phone to the waitress (cook? owner?). Lae prattled on for about 5 minutes, later explaining that she told the woman foreigners don’t like MSG, bones, blood, animal faces, or anything with a strong smell. We had no idea what she had ordered for us, but it all turned out to be delicious: steamed rice with grilled fish, stir-fried vegetables, deep-fried shrimp, a seafood medley, and stir-fried chicken and veggies.

I don’t know how that other expat couple fared.

Here are some photos.
The “parking lot” was behind the elevated restaurant, which backed up to family garden plots.

The front overlooked the Mekong, where locals hung out among the construction materials.

The “family”: Tony, Nikki, Carol, and Jon.

As we enjoyed the sunset, our view was suddenly blocked by a truck and forklift transporting paving stones.

Sometimes you just gotta laugh.

This guy found his own riverside bliss.

I’ve got to remember to buy one of these lovely toilet paper dispensers for our summer picnics in Michigan.

There’s my ride. Another fabulous family night.

Daily Life, Laos

Welcome to Khouvieng Country

December 5, 2010 Sharon 3 Comments

This week’s Family Night began with its usual trepidation and ended with us wearing the restaurant’s promotional polo shirts, jumping up and down in our own little mosh pit and singing “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi with the karaoke microphones.

In our ongoing quest to find a neighborhood joint we can call “our place,” we once again strayed from the familiar, safe comfort food of Vientiane’s western-style restaurants. A few other friends (whom we refer to as the out-of-town cousins à la the Griswolds and Cousin Eddie) joined us for the evening. Carol wouldn’t tell us where we were going, so we all met at our house and car-pooled. Well, there was just one car, so some of us crammed in the car; the others followed on motorbikes.

Carol’s eatery du jour was just off Khouvieng Road, a main artery that runs from our neck of the woods all the way to downtown. We pulled in to Khouvieng Country’s parking area, and the owner immediately came running out. He enthusiastically pumped Carol’s hand, saying, “Hello! I remember you!” She gently pointed out that they’d never met.

Our attention swiftly turned to the karaoke system, which was belting out “I Can’t Live” by Mariah Carey. Before we could set down our bags, Nikki was already at the front, mic in hand with a small but adoring Lao audience singing along. Her biggest fan, a tipsy Lao man who was friends with the owner, hovered at our table for much of the night, buying us beers and cheering for us to take the stage.

The restaurant’s décor was typical – lots of wood, garish fake flowers, twinkly lights, murals of traditional Lao landscapes, shiny colorful knick-knacks, etc. Unique features included battery-operated tea lights on the tables and a thatched roof overhanging the stage to create the illusion of a “sala,” the open-air little huts that dot the countryside. The staff was friendly and attentive, clearly amused by us.

Extended family, clockwise from front left: Courtney, Carol, Tony, Nikki, lovely waitress, Olivier, Jon

Deterred only momentarily by the all-Lao menu (none of us could read Lao script well enough to decipher it), Carol gave her usual instructions to the friendly owner: Bring us your five best dishes, preferably with no faces, bones or organs. Those turned out to be a green salad, spicy papaya salad, fried rice, barbecued chicken, and tom yam soup. The fried rice was some of the best I’ve had, with shrimp and chunks of some other savory meat I couldn’t identify. The chicken was also tasty, although the “no bones” request was blatantly ignored.

We were all a bit disappointed in the papaya salad, a local specialty that inspires a brutal sense of competition among Lao women, who all think they make it better than anyone else. Once you’ve tried homemade papaya salad prepared by a lady with something to prove, you’re bound to be let down by restaurant fare.

Anyway, it was hard to focus on the food when the guy running the karaoke system was clearly creating a song list tailor-made for the crazy expat crowd. We sounded terrible, but the Lao restaurant patrons wore huge smiles, waved their arms in the air, clapped and sang, sometimes actually getting up from their tables to deliver a microphone and push us toward the stage.

What could be more fun than eating and singing with your friends? Eating and singing in matching shirts! The restaurant owner brought out a pile of promotional polo shirts and passed them around. “Free! Free!” he said, handing out extras. “For your friends!” Tony’s first shirt was skin tight, which was awesome, but the kind owner heard our laughter and brought out a larger size.

The shirts were like superhero costumes. Suddenly, we all thought we were rock stars, and there was no getting us off the stage. Looking at the photos, I realize now we looked like the Partridge Family.

At one point, Carol and I pulled an older Lao lady away from her table and made her dance with us. She was a good sport and moved her mouth randomly to suggest she knew the words. There weren’t many people at the restaurant, but everyone seemed to enjoy our ridiculous display of misplaced confidence.

When we wrapped up our Bon Jovi finale, we filed out the door, waving and thanking everyone as if they had paid to see us. Best Family Night ever! Nikki says it was even the most fun she’s had in Laos so far. Khouvieng Country will be hard to top.

Here are a few more shots from our Khouvieng Country concert.

Daily Life, Laos

Family Night – Waterside

November 6, 2010 Sharon 2 Comments

If you’re driving north on Tha Deua, a main drag that runs parallel to the Mekong River here in Vientiane, and you want to get to our house, just turn right at the sign for Waterside Pub and Restaurant. We’ve been using that landmark for more than a year, but it never occurred to us to actually check it out – until now.

This week it was my turn to pick the Family Night restaurant, and I decided it was about time to visit Waterside. The usual gang (with the addition of Regina, a new German teacher from Switzerland) met at our house at 6:30, and we formed a motorbike convoy to the restaurant. A small Waterside sign indicated where to turn, but Carol thought the thatched-roof-hut-cum-noodle-shop next to the sign WAS the Waterside, so she slowed down and started to park. As if! We drove down the dirt road, dodging a few napping dogs, and turned in to possibly the most surprising Family Night pick so far.

Waterside was a huge venue, complete with its own “Sport Clup” and soccer field.

Fake palm trees, lots of twinkly lights, bubbling fountains and ponds with pink water lilies created a festive atmosphere. A little stage with dangling faux flower garlands, two tall chairs and microphones suggested the possibility of (a) live music, or (b) karaoke, either of which would have been fine by me.

Only one other table was occupied, and later we deduced it was the restaurant owner and his family. Yet the furniture was new-ish and clean, and the decor was relatively classy. We’re guessing this place is hopping on the weekends.

A young man took our drink order – Beer Lao, what else? Tony declared him to be the least attractive Beer Lao Girl of all the Family Night restaurants.

Then a sweet woman named Lee approached the table and explained that she was friends with the restaurant owner. “He doesn’t speak English, so I can help,” she said. Good thing! The whole menu was in Lao with no meaningful illustrations.

We put her in charge of ordering, encouraging her to pick five of the best dishes. We tried to express our preference for food free of faces, blood or bones, but she didn’t really understand. She told us her mother was presently on a trip to Toronto, so we hoped she might have some understanding of our western pickiness.

Before the food arrived, I recognized the first few notes of “Hotel California” and felt the call of the stage. I climbed up one of the tall chairs and sang a few verses into the mic (which was off, much to everyone’s relief).

Lee’s choices mostly got high marks. Although the portions were tiny, we liked the flavorful deep-fried pork, fried rice, stir-fried vegetables, and whole fish fried with tomatoes and onions. The seaweed soup was less favorably received.
I was sipping the broth when Tony said, “At least eat a potato.”
Carol and Nikki said in unison, “That’s not a potato; it’s tofu.”
“Well, I’m done with that then,” Tony said.
I like tofu, but I wasn’t thrilled with the seaweedy flavor.

Before long, a “band” showed up and played Lao music, which Carol said was out of tune. Sometimes it’s good to be tone deaf (not when you’re trying to learn a language with six distinct tones, though). Tony especially appreciated the duo’s excessive use of chimes to accentuate the sappy nature of their songs.

The verdict? Waterside would be a fun place for a big group to hang out, eat, drink and kick around a soccer ball. Next time, we’ll order more pork and less soup.

Daily Life, Laos

Family Night – Pinky Beef Pot

October 10, 2010 Sharon 2 Comments

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!”

Daily Life, Laos

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your na-a-ame … and they’re always glad you ca-a-ame

September 20, 2010 Sharon 6 Comments

Last year Daeng cooked dinners for us three nights a week. She usually prepared so much food that we could eat leftovers for lunch. This year she wanted to go back to school to study English, and of course we wanted to support her (big eye roll). So we kept her salary the same but cut her hours to half-time. Now she only cooks once a week, and the rest of the time Tony and I feel like hunter-gatherers. We never really know where our next meal will come from.

With no car, shopping for groceries is a bit of a challenge. We generally buy one backpack full at a time. That’s one excuse for not making a weekly menu, buying food and cooking at home. We could also whine about the inconvenience of buying produce at the fresh market and other supplies at the corner store, which likely will be out of whatever we need, forcing us to visit other shops in town. But, in all honesty, our biggest excuse involves an amalgamation of ennui, laziness, exhaustion, sweat and empty pockets. We’re simply shattered at the end of the day, and it’s strangely more expensive to cook at home for the two of us than it is to eat out.

So here it is Monday night, and I haven’t eaten a meal in my own house (other than a little fruit and yogurt for breakfast a couple times and a delivery pizza) since Daeng cooked fried rice last Tuesday.

We live about 15 minutes by motorbike from the center of Vientiane, where most decent restaurants are found. Our village, Thongkang, is not exactly a dining mecca. Nevertheless, our new friend, Carol, (Canadian chemistry teacher and fellow Thongkang resident) had the brilliant idea to try a different local eatery each week. Tony reluctantly agreed to participate, and another new friend, Nikki (Canadian counselor and resident of adjoining Sokpaluang village) signed on, as well.

Thursday night the four of us ventured around the corner to Anna Grilled Duck. A skinny guy wearing a face mask and grilling duck parts by the side of the road gestured us in to the restaurant garden, where we parked the motorbikes.

The restaurant comprised several “salas” – which are thatch-roofed wall-less huts, each with a low table and cushions. Tony balked at the idea of sitting cross-legged on a cushion for an entire meal, so we bypassed the salas and found a regular table with chairs. A fish with an abnormally large head watched us from its tank, while a bird in a cage chattered nearby.

The waitress brought one menu with English translations.

Placenta soup? No thanks. We ordered four ducks and some Beer Lao. I walked around the peaceful garden area to snap a few photos while we waited. The meat on the grill should have been a tip-off. Yep, that’s duck feet on the left, duck faces on the right, and unidentifiable duck bits on the back.

Soup soon arrived at the table. What kind? Who knows? Spring onions, various veggies and the requisite coagulated blood cubes floated in a clear broth. Carol was the only one brave enough to suck down a blood cube. She said it tasted like tofu.

Finally a small plate of duck chunks arrived at the table. It was like the cook put on a blindfold and went wacko with a cleaver. The pieces were random sizes and full of bones, so it was quite a chore to get a substantial mouthful of meat. What little I did get was quite tasty, though.

Tony was grateful for all the TP on the table.

We felt certain that more duck was coming, so we waited and waited until we nearly gnawed off our own arms. Carol eventually ordered a few more plates of duck. This time, the pieces were a bit more recognizable. I was about to nibble on one piece when I realized it was the duck’s bill. In fact, we had a whole plate of faces!

Nikki kisses a duck.

So Anna Grilled Duck was a bust. We all went back to our house and gorged on some Doritos and Oreos.

Next week: Mr. Khampeng’s Grilled Goat. Or maybe not.

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The Guide Hog

Tag Archives: Family Night

Final Family Night – Lao Kitchen

You can’t make a silk purse – or a Family Night – out of a sow’s ear

Family Night – Soundara Restaurant

Family Night – NeNaTa Restaurant

Welcome to Khouvieng Country

Family Night – Waterside

Family Night – Pinky Beef Pot

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your na-a-ame … and they’re always glad you ca-a-ame

Adventures in Teaching and Travel