Last week, I picked my Mom up from the airport and headed over to southeast 82nd for some grazing and shopping. We stopped at Fubonn shopping center, and first had a bite to eat at the Banh Cuon Tinh Danh.

I’ve been here a few times, and each time it really seems to get progressively more erstwhile.

Case in point: three of their banh cuon items feature “Shrimp Tempura”, which I thought was very odd but intriguing so I ordered one of them - the option with pork filling and topped with shrimp tempura.

After being served, I inquired to the missing shrimp, and was informed that the “shrimp tempura” was not the only “misprint” on the item, but that the banh cuon was not filled with anything at all, which explained the grilled pork scattered on top of plain, folded rice flour sheets. The owner claimed all the shrimp tempura items were misprints.

However, looking at Extra MSG’s photos from last year, you can see that there’s fried shrimp on top of the banh cuon, and yep, the banh cuon is stuffed (like it is traditionally). Perhaps they have changed the menu, that’s fine, but reprint them at least, instead of using the Jedi mind trick after I’ve ordered (”These aren’t the droids you’re looking for”.)

Earlier this year during my Mom’s previous visit she had the hui tieu dac biet, filled to the rim with fish balls, pork, liver, etc. It was good, and my young daughter helped slurp up the random protein items. This time she had a soup with thin egg noodles filled with tasty slices of stewed beef and your standard fish balls. The broth was very spicy and flavorful. The soup came with a garnish plate of sprouts, lime, jalapenos, and cilantro.

And that’s one thing that is bugging me about this place lately - the garnishes. I would expect more herbs and additional/different vegetables with my dishes. For instance, I had the Bun Thit Nuoung (cool rice noodles topped with grilled lemograss pork) here once and it was garnished only with cilantro, lettuce and pickled carrots and radish. Another time, I ordered Bun Thit Nuoung Cia Gio (with pork and fried egg rolls), and same deal. My banh cuon dish this time also suffered the same fate. Iceberg lettuce (which is a major foul, IMO), no cucumber, no mint, which I feel is essential for rice noodle dishes served with nuoc cham. And the cia gio were insipid - very thin, stuffed with hardly anything at all - I ate mostly egg roll wrapper skins. Admittedly, my mom sets the bar pretty hard with cia gio, but these weren’t even mediocre.

After shopping at Fubonn, we stopped by Vina Deli, a newish banh mi stop just a few blocks north of Fubonn. The banh mi menu is odd in that there are 11 items on the Vietnamese language side, and 9 items on the translated English side, and #1—#4 actually correlate, and after that it breaks down and devolves into chaos. I ordered the Banh Mi Thit Nuong, with the Vietnamese grilled pork — there is a Chinese BBQ pork option as well, but they are numbered differently on the menu, so I made sure to order by name. The lady behind the counter didn’t really “get” my order, so my mom thankfully intervened on my part.

The sandwich was actually very large ($2.75) in comparison to other banh mi shops in the area. The meat was flavorful and plentiful, and the pickled carrots and radish garnish was actually paper thin slices, rather than the long julienne — a small detail that I enjoyed immensely, as it added a different dimension. After Binh Minh (nee Maxim’s) on NE Halsey, this is the best Viet sandwich I’ve had in Portland.

Vina also features some very fresh and plentiful looking goi cuon rolls for $3, and sells plate lunches with rice and your choice of 1 to 3 items (the latter being $5.50). One of those item options appeared to be an entire fried pomfret, so this could potentially be a good deal.

In the same strip mall as Vina, there’s a Good Taste Chinese restaurant that sells roast pig and duck by the pound. We picked up half a duck ($8.95) and a good pound of roast pig ($7.95/lb) complete with a hefty veneer of crackling. The duck came with a plastic ramekin of duck sauce, which I poured over the fowl and a plate of jasmine rice that night for dinner. The meat on the duck was rather sparse, but it was tasty and the skin relatively crispy. The pork we used to make a braised dish, which is the subject of another post.