From Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam, by Andrew X. Pham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), Kindle pp. 122-123:
I wait for the rice-cake woman on the stoop. Normally, I mimic her cry from any part of the house, and no matter how noisy the neighborhood is, she hears and waits for me in the alley. I buy a mug of tea and two rice cakes—Vietnamese Twinkies wrapped in banana leaves. The gooey grains of glutinous rice, green and fragrant with the banana leaves, taste fat and fruit-sweet, like candied caviar. Embedded at the center, the ladyfinger banana has changed to a lavender hue haloing an ivory core. Hot tea in hand, I savor them, standing in the alley, back against the wall, watching the strip of sky navying over.
One by one the breakfast women weave through the alleys. The parade of food baskets ribbons the morning air with the varied aromas from every region of Vietnam: banh canh (udon in chicken broth), bun bo hue (spicy beef and anchovy-paste noodle soup), hu tieu (Chinesestyle noodle soup), banh beo (rice dumpling with shrimp powder and fishsauce), tau hu (soft tofu with ginger syrup), banh cuon (rice crepes with Vietnamese sausage and fishsauce), soi (sweet rice with mung beans and coconut shavings), banh mi thit (ham-and-pickled-daikon sandwiches), and a host of other morning food. Vietnam is a country of food, a country of skinny people obsessed with eating.
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