Establishing a Sensory Panel in Beer Land!

I hadn't been in Saigon long when I discovered Spare rib guy. Spare rib guy worked off a charcoal grill in an alley off Ðo Quang Ðau in the back packer area of district one in downtown Saigon. Spare rib guy would set up shop around midnight, which seems late, I know, but not on Ðo Quang Ðau.

Spare rib guy served only two dishes: grilled spare ribs and this other dish that was hard boiled eggs and sliced pork belly in some kind of brown gravy. (Six months after discovering Spare rib guy, I learned that this dish is called Thit Kho and while people use different types of eggs in this dish such as chicken or quail, Spare rib guy used hard boiled duck eggs. I wondered why they were so oddly large...)

Spare rib guy's offerings were the perfect pre-bedtime, high protein snack for any brewer. Especially in a land where everything is carbohydrate based. Everything sits on rice and is covered in a sugar based sauce and drank with sugar cane juice. Very few foods escape the touch of sweetness in Vietnam. Not even the fish is safe!

No doubt, there was probably sugar in that gravy somewhere and those ribs probably sat in a bath of sugar before he put them on the grill and then served them over rice, but Spare rib guy was cut and dry. He didn't even fuck with the pickled vegetables.

Spare rib guy wasn't there every night. But he was there most nights and definitely on the weekends. He didn't advertise. He didn't set up on the main street. He didn't need a license. Spare rib guy just picked a quiet corner off the beaten path, squatted down, lit his little grill and went to work.

And this might be the best part, Spare rib guy's prices. Ribs were like 20,000 Ðongs a piece which is less than a dollar American. The pork belly and gravy might have been 25K or 30K max, but the quality for quantity pricing couldn't be beat! Cheers to you Spare rib guy!