24, Sep 2008
Saigon Seafood (Maui)

Our first day on Maui, we decided to go for a drive and, essentially, ended up in Lahaina. We walked around a bit, sought out some reputed ice cream and examined a couple of recommended restaurants. But when we stumbled across Saigon Seafood, we figured it was fate. First, we love Vietnamese food. Second, we love anything that reminds us of our trip to Vietnam. And third, Vietnamese is great on a hot day.
Even better, it turned out the place makes really good food. E’s banh xeo (the fried pancake thing with bean sprouts) with shrimp was very good. It’s one of her favorite dishes, but often screwed up by even pretty good restaurants. The fried spring rolls were very tasty. And my vermicelli bowl with grilled beef and pork and bits of pork skin (??) was very good. But the home run was really the fried rice. E has been on a “fried rice for breakfast” kick lately, so we got some of their pork fried rice to take home and ate it the next couple of days. This is a really really great dish of fried rice. We’re not sure what, but something about it tastes more Vietnamese than your typical fried rice, and it’s just really flavorful. The (Vietnameseish) pork is especially tasty. The one wrinkle for me was that the nuoc cham seemed a lot milder than we’re used to (this was true at the other vietnamese place we tried on maui too).
Also, the waiter was great. He and his wife are expecting a child about the same time as we are, so we had a nice chat about babies and Vietnam and our visit there and how much grandparents love babies. Good times. If we’re over that way again, I bet we’ll stop by. And if we lived here we’d be regulars.

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