taste-buzz @ flickr.com CC BY 2.0

Fried tofu stuffed with shrimp (đậu hũ ky)

​Welcome back to Ethnic Eating 101, the Vietnamese edition. While phở, chả giò and bánh mì are all delicious in their own right, they're among the most common foods that people think of when thinking about Vietnamese food. Over the next couple of weeks we'll delve a little deeper into foods that may be increasingly unfamiliar. Today's agenda: noodle salads, a banquet made entirely of beef and broken-rice plates (as opposed to broken rice-plates).

First, a few words (okay, two paragraphs) about how to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant:

For the most part, Vietnamese restaurants aren't known for their obsequious service. In most places, you'll be greeted, asked how many in your party, seated and given menus. Menus may or may not be well-translated (or, in some cases, translated at all) and servers may or may not speak English with any reasonable level of fluency. You will probably have to flag down your server if you need something, and it would be best to ask ahead of time on a food board (or in the comments here) about food allergies, since comprehensive lists of ingredients are rarer than hen's teeth. At the end of the meal in all but the obviously-fancy places, you'll need to go up to the cashier to get and pay the bill. Bills aren't normally brought to the table. Don't forget to leave a tip, either on the table or in the jar at the cashier.

At a sandwich shop or a bakery, you need to set aside your idea of an orderly queue. If the Russians have elevated queuing to an art form (I once stood behind a woman on a line who informed me that thirteen people were behind her, all out getting a hot drink or other purchases), the Vietnamese are their foils and have zero use for a line. Being tall (and obviously non-Asian) helps, because you stand out, but watch out for the little old ladies with the sharpened tips on their parasols pointed right at your kidneys. If you dawdle or appear to be indecisive, it's a stone-cold guarantee that people will push past you or simply shout their orders in the liquid tones of tiếng Việt from right behind you.

And now, on to the food:

Bún

Bún is the generic term for a host of salad-type dishes based on room-temperature rice vermicelli, crisp, shredded herbs and lettuce, and the hot meat topping of your choice. By far the most popular kind of bún is bún chả giò thịt nướng, or rice vermicelli salad with sliced spring rolls (remember last week?) and grilled pork. Other popular choices are bò nướng (grilled beef), nem nướng (meatballs) or, for something a little more unusual, đậu hũ ky (shrimp paste stuffed inside tofu and deep-fried). Bún is usually garnished with pickled vegetables and served with nước chấm, the tangy-sweet-garlicky-spicy fish sauce condiment that is the ketchup of Vietnam.

geordino @ flickr.com CC BY 2.0<

​A special kind of bún that bears mentioning is bún chả Hà Nội (Hanoi-style bún). This arrives deconstructed, with grilled pork and a grilled meatball swimming in a small bowl of thin, clear, papaya-based sauce, a plate of rice vermicelli, herbs, vegetables and lettuce. No nước chấm with this one, but you don't need it. You'll be given a small bowl into which you tear some greenery, pile some rice vermicelli, a piece of smoky meat with a splash of the sauce and maybe a little hit of "rooster" sauce.

Where to get it? Any phở shop will serve bún; sadly, the phở king known as Thanh Lịch doesn't deliver the same amazingness with its bun; try Phở 79 (9941 Hazard, Garden Grove), catercorner from Thanh Lịch, instead. For bún chả Hà Nội, the rendition served at Viễn Đông (14271 Brookhurst, Garden Grove) will bowl you over with its dark smokiness. A bowl of bún is anywhere from $5-$8.