Two Margaritas

My arrival in Hanoi was not as smooth as I might have liked. My flight from Danang was delayed by three hours. The hotel who had promised to pick me up from the airport didn’t show. I arrived at the hotel at 11pm and they didn’t have a room for me. They did, however, have a room at their ‘sister’ hotel. The sister hotel was being renovated such that whilst water and power were in dubious supply, loud drilling noise and dust were in constant supply. And I had to fight for the privilege of leaving the next morning. I re-established myself eventually but my good humour was rattled.

Every guide to Saigon speaks of the wooonderful colonial hotels which have just faaaabulous interiors and bars which don’t just serve drinks, but are historically significant in and of themselves. Having installed myself just down the road from the Rex, apparently famous for having hosted American brass during the war, I betook myself to the rooftop cocktail bar for a drink, well-earned, in my opinion, and a snack. I found, to my disappointment, that the heyday of the Rex had passed. I should have known: any bar in Vietnam which has bratwurst on the bar snacks menu is a little suspect. The sound of ice against cocktail shaker cheered me no end and I could have drunk fourteen more margaritas but still… even with a fibreglass elephant in the background, this was not the post-colonial drink of my dreams.

Fast forward to my last night in Saigon. I had a plan and that plan was to eat at a swanky Vietnamese haute cuisine type number. Everything else in Saigon is shut on a Monday night and so was dinner option number one. Fortunately, I had been tramping around town all day and so had scoped out the B-List. Somehow, and I fear this is not entirely to my credit, I wound up spending my last night in South East Asia on a Tex-Mex jamboree. Plenty of time for breakfast pho and swanky Viet-lunch tomorrow.

Anyway, La Cantina screamed Tourist! Expat! Margarita! When I arrived, I was the only one in the restaurant upstairs. Orange couches, no small talk. My entirely excellent margarita arrived fast and so did tortilla chips and loads of salsa loaded with onion and garlic. I had a pang of Newtown nostalgia when the baby burrito, all cheese and beans, hit the table with a hearty, wholesome, leaden thump. Is Guzman y Gomez licensed yet? And why not? All that place needs is a few more tables and readily available Coronas and margaritas. Back to HCMC. I had vetoed sushi as a dinner option earlier in the evening on the grounds that raw fish on the eve of a long haul flight is not a good idea. This sensible approach fell by the wayside when I was faced with ceviche on the menu. Glorious, glorious, ceviche! And jalapenos, in this land of birds-eye chillies! Of course this warranted another margarita. Note that the martini glass full of ceviche is smaller than the margarita glass full of margarita.

I got excited by my coaster and took a picture of it. Instead of treating me like the crackpot who takes photos of coasters, as she would have been entitled to, the waitress brought me a box of coasters to go. Splendid.

As I soaked up my margarita, I realised that there is a nexus between Tex-Mex food and Vietnamese food. The marvellous combination of lime, tomato, coriander, onion and chilli (with or without coconut) shared by the two cuisines mandates all culinary intersections. Whensoever I should make my way to Mexico, I pledge to eat Vietnamese food. And drink margaritas.