Saigon surprises

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The convenient handles are chunks of actual sugarcane - you can crush it between your teeth to extract raw sweetness

Here’s two more dishes that you can get at Pho Saigon (1551 Niagara Falls Blvd., Amherst) and nowhere else in the area.

Shrimp paste on sugarcane and grilled pork on rice noodles are Vietnamese basics that each have their own charms.

The shrimp paste is ground shrimp wrapped around a hunk of sugarcane and deep-fried. (It’s sometimes grilled in other restaurants.)

Okay, so the texture is more like kielbasa than hot dog - it’s still tasty

The result is sort of a hot dog made of shrimp, deep fried - but better than that sounds. My kids go for them in a flash.

They also clamor for the grilled pork dishes. The thinly sliced pig seems to be stir-fried, not grilled. The dish arrives with the meat anointed in a rich caramel-onion sauce that’s aromatic and bowl-lickable.

The mint, the ground peanut, the holy basil - what an aromatic bowlful

It’s hard to beat the grilled pork at 99, on Bailey Avenue, but this dish takes a run at it. (Truth be told, I still fancy 99’s pho, however.)

One day, there will be so many Vietnamese restaurants that the hungry can talk about the best Vietnamese food in Western New York without comparing restaurants you could count on one hand.

A boy can dream, can’t he?

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Filed under pork, restaurants