Belated Birthday Lunch @ Que Huong

Well what do you know? It's another visit to Que Huong yet again! This time for a belated bday lunch with my educator GF's, TORC (The Other Rock Chick), Divalicous and KD (the Knitting Diva). I think I kind of scared them when I told them we were going to eat crocodile...which we actually didn't. I'll save that for another dining experience with Bert and more adventurous friends.

I was hoping that Jay would be there since he remembered me from last time. Unfortunately, he was out that day at a wedding, according to the Japanese anime-haired waiter who seated us. Okay, the restaurant was fking empty and I know that since we had a party of four, he sat us at a regular square table with no lazy Susan. I politely asked if we could have a larger circular table with the lazy Susan since we'd be ordering a lot of food and it would be easier, blah blah blah. He said that he couldn't seat us at a round table because they were "reserved" (cue sound of crickets). I thought, okay, well maybe a huge ass lunch party was going to come in and take over the restaurant, so all right. BUT, that did not happen, so we could HAVE sat there. I made a mental note of this for a future visit.

I know that if Jay were there, he wouldn't have played us like that. So we reluctantly sat at the square table. The whole time we were there, Dragon Ball Z-haired guy sat a party of 5 at a circular table and one dude sat at a big table as well. Doesn't look like a big party to me. So, I guess I will have to talk to Jay about that next time.

Two of us ordered cafe sua da's (Vietnamese ice coffee with condensed milk). This was already served iced rather than dripping from a filter.

This is what I had my eye on last time, the Pork and Shrimp Jack Fruit Salad, so that is what were ordered, or rather, what I ordered because I was the Queen Bitch for the Day. I looked up a few recipes online for this and it's pretty easy to make.

And here it is. This was even better than the Banana Blossom Salad from the last time I was here. The green jackfruit had a nice meaty texture and you had your sour, sweet, salty, spicy, and herbal flavors in there.

Everone liked the sesame rice chips as well. KD said she would have been happy having this as the meal. Ugh, you can see my ultra dry skin on my thumb! Yuck!

This was another item I wanted to try last time...

The Wild Boar with Lemongrass & ed Pepper was also served with the sesame rice chips. The boar didn't really taste "wierd" at all. It kind of tasted like pork. You could really taste the lemongrass in there. The sauce was fantastic. It was great with rice the next day too. Although the menu said it was "topped with dill", that herb didn't really look or taste like dill to me. I didn't want to ask anime-haired guy though.

More of the boar and my horrid dry skin. Well, not dry enough to peel like "Goldmember" in the third Austin Powers installment but dry enough for me to notice. None of us had lotion in our purses! Sacrilege!

For my friends' sake, I ordered the Banh Xeo (Vietnamese crepe).  Again, it was kind of too mushy and eggy-like for me. They loved it though. I think I prefer the smaller version with a more crisp exterior.

Here are the herbs and sauce for the crepe.

Like my first visit, I loved the Caramel Prawns in Ginger and Black Pepper Sauce. The prawns were a little bit smaller (there were 5 instead of 4), but it was just as good as I remembered. Even though we ate all the prawns, I took home the sauce!!!

I really loved the sauce here and oh yeah, nasty jokes were implied with sucking the juice on the shrimp heads.

And here are the ever popular wings. This is where our spiky and fey haired friend scored a few points. He did a large order of wings for us but did half with fish sauce and the other half with tamarind. Thank you "Mr. I-Won't-Seat-You-In-the-Larger-Table-But-I-Will-Seat-other-Asian-people-with smaller-parties-instead-of-you! "I liked the fish sauce wings' flavor better than the tamarind, which I found too cloyingly sweet.

After opening my gifts, reading my cards, etc, we gathered up our stuff to go to the next place for today's lineup.  Next up, dessert!