Not so yummy, yummy

The last few days have been cold and dreary, so when Manoella asked where we should meet for dinner, I suggested Yummy Yummy in the Sunset for warm Vietnamese noodle soup. I remember the last time I was there (I just wandered in off the street after a work event) I had a tasty bowl of pho. I wanted that again.

When I stepped inside this time, the restaurant was warm and smelled of sauteed crab. It was a heavenly change from the blustery cold. Manoella was already there (I was about 15 minutes late because I took the wrong bus and then had to walk a dozen blocks). I perused the menu and decided up on the bun rieu, which is rice noodles in a tomato based soup with seafood.

My mom used to make this for me and my sisters when we were younger. I remember waking up late on weekends and there would be a giant pot of the soup simmering on the stove, noodles in a colander on the counter, and lettuce and cilantro on the kitchen table. We'd help ourselves to noodles and soup. The soup would be orange with bits of ground pork, egg, shrimp, and crab meat (sometimes including the crab roe, my favorite part), and it was delicious.

My sister's godmother who lives in San Francisco also makes this. When I visit her and her husband, she'll usually ask for me to stay for breakfast and she'll have a bowl of bun rieu waiting for me or some other tasty Vietnamese dish. I think her bun rieu is actually better than my mom's; the flavors are more intense without being salty. The last time I was there and she had this for me, I asked her how to make it. She said it was easy: cook some chicken broth with tomatoes and add seafood or whatever else I want. It seemed too easy and I haven't made it yet.

I suppose I had high expectations of this bun rieu from Yummy Yummy. But knowing what goes into it and how it can be made, I couldn't see how it could go wrong. But this bun rieu was wrong. Wrong is maybe too harsh, but it wasn't good. The soup tasted salty but not of salt. Perhaps there was MSG (I can never tell) and it left me really thirsty. There were both canned tomatoes and fresh tomatoes, which I thought was a little weird. There were also half-moon slices of Vietnamese pork cake, which I had never seen in this before. There were only three fresh shrimp. And, the pork was made into meatballs, which had a strange, intense fish flavor. However, the noodle soup did help in getting me warm, I'll give it that much.

I left Yummy Yummy disappointed. I don't think I'll ever trek that far out into the Sunset to eat there again. I suppose it's time for me to start experiment with making bun rieu myself.