Soft Rice and Other People

So we go, Hope and I, to dinner Friday night. Nothing special, just a nearby Vietnamese place called Viet Nam. Despite eating there regularly when I worked for Brain Food (neé Novaré), during the dot-com heyday, I didn't realize till Friday night that the name is “Viet Nam”, not “Vietnam”.

I’m not very smart.

Anyway. Hope always gets the same thing at Viet Nam: No. 32. And I always get No. 141. Which is perfect, since our life together can be neatly summed in the words of Stanley Cavell, “Being Odd, Getting Even”. This time, and maybe it’s some kind of post-Halloween funkiness, Hope orders Soft Rice and Chicken, a $2.50 appetizer. A strange order for at least three reasons.

First, Hope is not the sort of person who orders appetizers as entrees. Category mistakes aren’t Hope’s style. Plus, it’s annoying.

Second, Hope has no idea what “soft rice” is and, despite the fact that I like to feign an encyclopedic grasp of Asian cuisines, I have no idea what it is. And it simply won't do for one of us to ask the waiter. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know that either.

Third, Hope is not an adventurous eater. She’s the very last person to order the unknown. She’s the very first person to tease me when I do.

Once I ordered Bean Kurd Knots — yes, actual knots made of fermented soy bean; and, no, I have no idea who or what ties these knots -- at our favorite Chinese place, a little bakery-restaurant in Richardson called Jeng Chi. The waitress tried to convince me that only crazy or stupid white people order bean kurd knots, and none of them ever like it — of course, being a sweet person, she said this very diplomatically. But we don't have to pretend: she thought I was making a mistake. She was right. I didn't like the topographic tofu. But now I’ve got this weird little story, and what do you have?

But Hope isn’t like that. Ever. Except when she is. Like Friday night.

So the waiter brings this soft rice and chicken appetizer, which looks like a giant expectorated glob of camel snot. With chunks. Covered in carrots and bean sprouts (which she hates) and cilantro (which she loves). What to do? Hope looks at me; looks at the camel spew; looks at the waiter; looks back at me. What the hell, she mutters. Try it with some sriracha and hoisin — I suggest — lots of it.

Soft rice is a warm, congealed rice gruel–pudding, slightly opaque, mostly flavorless. It’s what Oliver Twist would’ve eaten if he'd been born in Saigon. I thought the texture was interesting, especially while it was warm.

I'm still not sure how or why she ordered it, how or why she managed to eat all of it — well, except for the bean sprouts. Apparently in Hope’s Lovejoyesque Great Chain of Gross Stuff, soft rice gruel-pudding ranks above (actually, below) bean sprouts.

I finished No. 141 without any guilt for Hope’s plight. I’m a bastard that way. Actually, that’s a lie: I pestered her to share my No. 141 till she silenced me with a glare. See, I’m really a bastard in that way.

And so soft rice assumes its place in our own private hell of culinary disaster, right next to the bean kurd knots.