What’s for dinner?

Lao comestibles are truly a mix of good foods as they share many dishes with neighboring countries while having a few specialties. We have yet to try the more bizarre delicacies that are sold, such as ant egg soup, barbecued bat and duck blood, but we have tasted our fair share of peculiar dishes. Unfortunately, we don’t have pictures of the many meals described below, but maybe for those with sensitive stomachs, words are enough.

It is commonly said that the Lao people eat everything…thus far that statement has proven correct. Our experience with food began soon after we arrived in Lao, which was good since we were rather hungry after the trip! Lao victuals are best described as a conglomeration of Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese cuisines. It does have its own unique dishes, but usually when we ask if a dish is Lao or not people will say that it originates from one of the aforementioned countries.

We wet our pallets when Brennan and Kristina visited us on their whirlwind-world-honeymoon-tour. Some of you may have heard their colorful account of an afternoon snack of barbecued dog (entrails and tails included). I maintain that the sauce was excellent and the meat was tasty, but the extras didn’t have much going for them apart from turning our stomachs.

Spending time with a host family in our first two months here was not only extremely helpful in broadening our understanding of language, but also introduced our taste buds to a variety of foods. While with them we ate fish gill soup, buffalo skin (which is a delicacy even here in Tha Thom where it is deep fried), marinated chicken feet and snails. To our chagrin we missed out on eating the 2-inch-long grubs, frogs, and song birds that we saw gracing the counter top of the kitchen.

Dragon Fruit

Eating Seaweed Soup with Bounpheng

Close-up of Slimy Goodness!

Little did we know that our lips had only been moistened for the culinary experience of rural Lao in Tha Thom! Here, roasted duck feet, embryotic eggs, iguana, sparrow, monkey, mouse deer, seaweed soup, many new fruits (mak kho, mak ko, mak tao) that sound the same, pickled garlic, innards soup (very common in the office), stir-fried cucumbers (one of my favorites) and a type of  "jay-o" (a dipping sauce) made from a cows fecal matter, are some of the special items on the menu.

As you might expect, rice is the staple in our diet and just as there are hundreds of varieties and flavors of potatoes in America so there are many varieties of rice here…and they all have a name! The most common and enjoyed rice in South East Asia is sticky rice (gluttonous rice). It is steamed in a basket, not immerses in water and cooked as normal rice is, and is eaten with other food by forming a ball in the hand and then using this ball to pick up veggies and/or meat. Interestingly, just as potatoes come in many colors, rice comes in a variety of hues! One of our favorites is purple (or black as the locals label it) sticky rice. Most commonly this is sweetened, stuffed into a piece of bamboo and then roasted over the fire. The bamboo is them pealed back and the rice column can be enjoyed.

White and Purple Sticky Rice in the Traditional Rice Basket

For the most part we enjoy the wide variety of foods we are served, but the normal meal in Lao isn’t all that foreign. Noodle soup is available at almost every shop and fried rice, omelets, fried eggs, wai-wai, steamed veggies and corn on the cob are some of the foods that remind us of ‘home.’
Posted by Jeffrey