I went to Vietnam in 1996, very early on in the development of the tourism industry there, and before I’d ever eaten Vietnamese food anywhere. My friend and I ate at dozens of restaurants, very few of which had any English on their menus or English-speaking staff. Our strategy was just to pick a few things at random and eat whatever showed up on the table. To this day, I remember the food we ate there as some of the most delicious, varied, and healthy cuisine I’ve ever had. Basically, everything we got was pretty wonderful. I don’t recall a single bad or even mediocre meal. What really struck me was the huge variety of dishes—not just rice and noodles, but all sorts of things, in all sorts of preparations. (The Vietnamese are no slouches at baking bread and pastry, too, due to the long French influence.)

These days when I eat at a Vietnamese restaurant I try to do the same thing—find something on the menu that I have no idea what it is, and order it. This strategy rarely fails. Just two weeks ago I did it at an amazingly good hole-in-the-wall place in Biloxi, and it was wonderful. (That time, I got banh hoi with grilled pork, and I confess that I discreetly Googled how to eat it when it showed up on the table, but it turned out that my assumption “wrap everything in the lettuce leaves” was correct )

I love good pho as much as the next person, but I do urge everyone to branch out.