Stuffed omelette (Banh khoai or banh xeo)

Stuffed omelette (banh khoai), most comfortably described as Vietnam's version of the taco, is today probably the best-known dish from Hue.

Stuffed omelette made with rice flour and flavoured with cumin, it is fried until deliciously crispy around the edges in pans over charcoal burners.It is filled with little mounds of pounded pork, shrimps, a few bean sprouts and some mashed green beans, and then folded over.

To eat it, you break a piece off with chopsticks and wrap it in fresh mustard greens with fresh green herbs, slices of green banana and green fig, and dip it in sauce. The fresh leaves, which include the spicy, red-tinged cumin leaf, help to cut through any oiliness in the fried dish, as does the sourness of the banana and fig, which are also digestive aids.

The roll you create can be enormous if you do not limit yourself to a carefully-wrapped small piece of banh khoai . Hence, it is not a dish which Vietnamese girl, who are make a show of barely eating in front of the opposite sex, would feel comfortable ordering because it requires opening your mouth to almost of proportion.

Given that women in Hue are probably even more graceful and shy than their southern counterparts, an increased sense of table etiquette may be one of the reasons why banh khoai is actually a restrained Hue version of Ho Chi Minh City's larger and bulkier banh xeo.

Although xeo refers to the south of the pancake batter sizzling in butter, it is never as crisp as banh khoai . It also incorporates that favourite southern ingredient, coconut milk, and you can eat it at many street stalls or hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City.

Source: Vietnam Style