pork belly

You may unfortunately remember the era through the parts that quickly calcified into cliché: $14 cocktails in Mason jars, the monoculture of pork belly, a nationwide proliferation of flaccid fried green tomatoes.

Under the heat lamps of the serving counter his team of chefs are busy carving a chunk of crispy pork belly, plating haddock fishcakes and replenishing huge bowls of new potatoes and roasted carrots.

“I don’t want to intimidate people because a lot of the time you can’t be real with your lawyer,” she tells me over our plates of pork belly lechon and Napa caesar salad.

The plates on offer, sometimes as cheap as $1.40, are crammed with local specialties like shredded eel with hot oil, steamed pork ribs or red braised pork belly.

To make a banh tet, banana leaves are lined with rice, soft mung beans and pork belly and rolled into a tight log, which is then wrapped in the leaves and tied up with strings.