My husband and I were on our honeymoon. We were in Saigon for a few days and had heard about the famous "Lunch Lady," who serves steaming bowls of soup filled with odds and ends, but are somehow fabulously delicious. She was not the easiest person to find in Saigon, because she does not have a store front. Instead, she sells her soups from a shady corner underneath a large tree in the Hoang Sa region of Saigon.
We were determined to find her and found her on our last day in Saigon. We were her first customers that day, sitting down on plastic stools that shifted easily under our weight. Nonetheless the decor did not deter us. We watched hypnotized as she stirred the yellow/orange soup filled with chicken, pork and bits of offal.
The first sip of the soup confirmed that the search and wait were well worth it. The soup was rich, full of different herbs and spices and masked the ordinary noodles with extraordinary flavor. Simply put, the Lunch Lady is justifiably famous. If I ever return to Vietnam, a stop at the Lunch Lady's stall will be at the top of my list.
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