As promised, my wife who still loves me and I ordered snacks at Bia Hoi Foxy Tiger Mom and Shockingly Young Daughter when we went there for our early evening bia hoi today.
Things started out pretty smoothly when Foxy Tiger Mom figured out that we were gonna have food this time. Shockingly Young Daughter brought us peanuts which are different in country than you’re probably used to. I’m not sure if they’re raw or what, but they’re definitely not roasted hard like in the States and they’re crunchy but not as crunchy as you maybe expect, and you shell and eat them and just drop the shells on the sidewalk when you’re done. The peanuts are a nice touch. But we wanted to buy food this time so Bia Hoi Foxy Tiger Mom and Shockingly Young Daughter could make a little dough off us for a change. So we asked for a menu.
The menu came in the form of the very kind girl who works next door at the trendy cafe that’s clearly a prime selfie-taking location who Foxy Tiger Mom enlisted to help with the whole menu situation, which was clearly a bit of a wrench thrown in the works. Trendy Cafe Chick spent about 10 minutes working hard to translate the menu on her phone so we could order. I took a look at it and asked if they had anything small that we could just snack on while we enjoyed our bia hoi. And that’s how I basically wiped out all of her hard work on the menu translation because she had to erase it to translate “No snacks here.”
And I was all like, Oh man, I should have just picked something off the menu, because the menu was gone and there was no way I was gonna ask Trendy Cafe Chick to do that work all over again. I ordered the shrimp, which in Vietnamese is tôm, and which was the only thing from the menu translation that I could remember. It’s worth noting that if you pronounce tôm like the American name Tom, the person you’re talking to will have no idea what you’re talking about.
At some point before the food came out, the guy who I’m pretty sure is Foxy Tiger Mom’s husband, whose job it is to sit and smoke, and who’s pretty clearly punching up, came over with his phone on which he’d translated “Welcome honored guest,” which probably wasn’t quite so weirdly formal in the original Vietnamese, but which was a nice touch.
When the shrimp came, the older guy who was sitting at the table next to us and who toasted his glass of bia hoi with us—”dzô, dzô”—showed us that we were supposed to season the shrimp with the salt and chilis and lime and gave us some chili sauce for dipping which made all the difference. It turns out that Trendy Cafe Chick was dead to rights on this one: Bia Hoi Foxy Tiger Mom and Shockingly Young Daughter definitely had snacks and the charred baby tôm dipped in chili sauce was totally on point.
Some of the less adventurous eaters back in real life maybe wouldn’t enjoy the fact that the heads and shells and legs and the whole business were still on the tôm and would maybe give them a hard pass. These folks would be missing out, indeed. Because the charred tôm at Bia Hoi Foxy Tiger Mom and Shockingly Young Daughter totally blows your basic American bar snacks out of the water in terms of tastiness and crunchiness and awesomeness.
I tried to do the important work of cultural exchange by letting Trendy Cafe Chick know that the tôm was in fact the perfect snack and just what the doctor ordered. She seemed to understand, which was nice and so I made a mental note to go there some time for a fancy coffee drink and selfie taking.
Speaking of selfies. Bia Hoi Foxy Tiger Mom and Shockingly Young Daughter is situated between two prime selfie-taking stations, Trendy Cafe stage right and the other place stage left. I’m not sure what type of business the other place is or what makes it so prime for selfie taking, but every time we go to Bia Hoi Foxy Tiger Mom and Shockingly Young Daughter for bia hoi there’s a constant stream of young and attractive and trendy chicks who go there to take selfies out front. It’s weird.
So there you have it. The bar snacks at Bia Hoi Foxy Tiger Mom and Shockingly Young Daughter are totally legit and I’d recommend them to anyone seeking a local bia hoi joint with tasty snacks that’s close to a prime selfie taking location if anyone’d ever ask me, which nobody has yet, but they really should. Bia Hoi Foxy Tiger Mom and Shockingly Young Daughter is aces all the way.