Tet Offensive

While the rest of the Sino-influenced world ushers in the Year of the Rabbit, the Vietnamese Zodiac insists that it's the Year of the Cat (cue hippie Al Stewart song). I found this out on Friday, when the ambassador of Vietnam held a dinner celebrating Tết, or the lunar new year, at the Sheraton. Being half-Viet and fully unable to speak the language, I spent the night tweeting away politically incorrect observations like how the wine sucked and there were no gwapos in the room. That was a PNoy reference, by the way. Now I truly love Vietnamese food, I've spent the last three years searching for a comparable banh mi to the one from Hanco's, a little shop in Brooklyn I lived next to that was my go-to place whenever I was hungover or too lazy to cook, which meant all the time. The buffet dinner at this night of cats and caterwauling (you know what I mean if you've ever heard Vietnamese music) was heavy on the mystery meatloaf, which Viets are masters of. This one tray had an interesting array of gelatinous, layered slices, and despite my better judgment I sampled a piece, thinking it was some kind of French-inspired terrine. It was inedibly chewy and didn't taste like anything, but its texture was disturbing enough for my tongue to project bilious qualities it probably didn't possess. My mom hazarded a guess that it was made of tripe, offal, congealed blood and other pork by-products that are normally heavily disguised in other ethnic dishes. I think I'm over my Anthony Bourdain Nasty Bits phase where I'll try anything street. Just because an exotic foreign culture fries up a rat doesn't make it anything more than a fried rat.