noodlepie has defined the wonderful Vietnamese dish bánh xèo very well in a posting a couple years ago about a restaurant in Sài Gòn (District 1 downtown). This dish is a very thin crepe or pancake with shrimp and pork mixed in. You role sections of the crepe up into large lettuce leaves supplemented with mint leaves and then dip it into nước mắm (fish sauce). Read noodlepie -- he is much better at describing this than me.
The version he describes from downtown Sài Gòn has a white flour base, though. Back home in the USA, me wife always added curry powder so the crepe was yellow -- much more of a Vietnamese color. That is the way we found bánh xèo in Chợ Lớn (the Chinese area of Ho Chi Minh City) last night -- large yellow crepes.
We had met Hiền's old friend from high school days at the huge Bình Tây Market and then walked across the street to find this curbside stand on the corner of Đại Lộ Hậu Giang.
This is a very typical way to find dinner in Việt Nam -- look around for something good at the street stands on virtually every street. You can buy things from different stalls and combine them at one table. You almost always have to find something to drink from somewhere else close by -- here we had nước mía, iced sugar-cane juice (in the plastic bags with a straw) delivered from across the street, and I had iced coffee delivered from a shop across the corner.
