Quán Long Gió - Lap An Lagoon (Vietnam)

I don’t usually build a day around a shellfish. This one I did.

Lập An Lagoon is about 800 hectares of brackish water at the foot of the Bạch Mã range, an hour or so out of Huế. From the road it reads as scenery, and most people stop for the photo and keep driving.

It’s a working farm. The stakes and floats out in the shallows are oyster beds, worked here for roughly twenty years, and the restaurants along the shore exist downstream of that. I came to eat oysters in the place that grows them.

Locally they go three ways: raw with lime and chili, grilled under scallion oil, or cooked down into cháo hàu, rice porridge. I had them in the shell first. Then the porridge, which is the house specialty and turned out to be the best thing on the table. Rice broken down soft, oysters folded in whole and still tender, scallion and pepper on top. Savory without being heavy.

Then the meal got away from me. Whole fried fish. Shrimp skewers off the coals. Beer, then more beer. All of it eaten outside, water a few meters off.

Quán Lộng Gió, eastern shore of Lập An, Phú Lộc. Order less than I did.

Which meal completely got away from you?

(Versão em Português nos comentários) Less