57: A tale of two xôi gà
North vs South but also North vs North
Welcome to my little dining out project. Its purpose is to get more acquainted with Vietnamese cuisine while I have the privilege of living in Vietnam. A tale of two… will see me try the same dish at two different restaurants. Trying something once is great, but two tries, hopefully in quick succession, should offer me (just slightly) more insight into the dish.
Whether it’s something I’ve had before or one that is brand new, my hope is that the small comparison will help me better understand the dish, what variations might exist, and what I generally think of it. I want to become less ignorant when writing about Vietnamese food and a less ignorant resident of Vietnam.
I am also a recovering picky eater and still on the journey of understanding what my more mature palate is. I hope this project will help with that, too.
Previous tales have been on phở, bánh cuốn, bún mọc, and bánh mì chay.
In October’s restaurant list update, I mentioned a bowl of xôi gà (chicken with sticky rice) I had in Hanoi that changed my view of sticky rice. It was the most pleasurable dish of sticky rice I have ever had in my life, including the ways I’ve had it in Thai cuisine. It was sticky but not gluey, soft but not mushy, and the tender, shredded chicken breast with a drizzle of soy sauce was a simple and perfect pairing. The components were made well and combined thoughtfully.
I immediately went in search for something similar in Saigon. But my search had to be strategic. Xôi gà is a huge thing here. But what you can easily find on a street cart (I can think of at least four within a five minute walk from my apartment), is not the same as what I had in Hanoi. What I associate with xôi gà in Saigon is almost exclusively a to-go item that consists of a bed of sticky rice, which is then piled high not only with shredded chicken, but often other chicken parts including chicken chicharrones; paté; char siu pork; quail eggs; or pork floss. Fried shallots are usually the crown. Your drive up to a cart and pick your mix. But there is no Saigon version of an austere box of sticky rice with shredded breast with soy sauce. Xôi gà is one example where you can see how in comparison to Hanoi, Saigon is the more brash, flashy sibling.
On Google Maps and some of the delivery apps, I did my best to add keywords that a restaurant might have in their name or description to signify that they served Northern cuisine. My bowl of xôi gà in Hanoi was actually from a shop whose primary dish is phở gà, so I tried to scour the menus of such places here. My search yielded almost no places that were convenient. But on a random try on Grab one night, I did find one place. It had many dishes associated with Hanoi and the surrounding area, including both phở gà and xôi gà. Based on the picture, the xôi gà looked most similar to my memorable dish than any other I’d found. I had to try it.
However, if I wanted to use this dish as a tale entry as I had initially thought, I was coming up short finding a counterpart. So, I went in another direction. Rather than compare two Northern-style sticky rices, why not do a North versus South comparison?
My quest was then to find places in Saigon who had xôi gà offerings that didn’t always default to the meat bonanza box. Searches revealed just how varied the meaning of “xôi gà” can be in Saigon, and my goal was to find something kind of similar to the Northern style with shredded chicken only. The place I settled on tosses their shredded chicken in a salty-sweet sauce, which I thought would act like the soy sauce.
Orders
Some xôi spots have you order according to the chicken part you want (because price will vary), and at both, I ordered the most basic: shredded chicken (breast) and sticky rice, aka xôi gà xé. The picture suggested to me that at the Southern spot (Xôi Gà 1, XG1), there could be paté automatically included as it was listed in some of the other bowls. So, I made a note in my order for it not to be included, just in case. The picture from the Northern spot (Xôi Gà 2, XG2) indicated that the chicken would be skin on, which wasn’t the case in Hanoi.
I did add some quail eggs to my XG1 order, as I worried about overall portion size and thought the extra protein could up the satiety factor for me.
Sticky Rice
I haven’t yet brought up how this is another delivery tale. There were no qualms about doing so as I mentioned how xôi gà in Saigon is strongly associated with take-away carts here. There are places that have seats from what I know, but I think you’re still eating it out of a styrofoam box. Delivery, though, likely had an impact on why the rice was not as nice as what I had in Hanoi. Fresh from the steamer, it would be at its peak texturally. Time in a box causes it to dry out a little and become more chewy, especially on the edges – I knew that could be an issue. A little of that chewiness was a negative comment about the rice for both. No gluiness, no dry-dry pieces, mostly just the soft-stickiness I expected. Portions were not as small as I feared, and I think I got slightly more from XG2. Honestly, I can’t say that one sticky rice was better than the other, and I did eat the bowls on subsequent days.
Chicken
The chicken on each makes these two bowls almost completely different dishes despite them both being called xôi gà. This might be a poor example, but I think of how a Quarter Pounder and a Big Mac are both “hamburgers,” but they eat completely differently. Same same with these two xôi gà’s.
I’ll start with XG2, as that was my stand in for my OG Hanoi bowl. The chicken from HG2 was chopped and not shredded, but I decided to shred it a bit upon plating to make it more like the OG. It was tender, and I think arriving in chunks rather than shreds helped prevent it from drying out in the box. I don’t enjoy poultry skin that’s not crispy, so I wished I had just removed it. My palate still hasn’t learned to appreciate the chewy-squeaky quality. The portion was ample, and my salty heart confesses that it could have done with more soy sauce for seasoning. The menu listed that there was also chicken fat, which I assumed was drizzled or spread on the rice. It didn’t really register to me.
My guess is that the chicken at XG1 is shredded, tossed in the dark crimson sauce, and then sits in a dish at the ready for quickly building bowls. This meant it was quite stringy and tough from being exposed to air for much longer. Not not enjoyable, but not exactly what one hopes for. The big surprise was that underneath the chicken was a layer of caramelized onions gracing the top of the rice. Nothing on the delivery app clued me into this, or I misread or mistranslated something. They were sweet and delicious, so their inclusion was not a problem. What was a problem was that the chicken’s sauce was as sweet as it was salty – I think it might have been a black-bean based sauce – which meant that in combination with the onions, the dish ate very sweet. Almost too sweet. After a few bites, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make it through. Chilli sauce to the rescue! Some heat and acid worked well, and after a few more bites, I started to really enjoy it, dry chicken and all. Chilli sauce is such a standard condiment here that I don’t feel bad for adding it. There was also a scallion oil, but not enough was there to add much flavour, similar to the XG2 chicken fat.
Extras
Being in the South meant I wasn’t going to be able to escape the standard xôi gà topping of fried shallots. I love them, but they are sweet. My XG2 bowl couldn’t be quite as Northern as my OG with them; my XG1 bowl was extra sweet because of them.
The quail eggs probably weren’t necessary for satiety in the end, but I ended up being happy they were there. Breaking them up into small pieces and using them to tamper the sweetness of the sauce and onions also helped balance things out. The sticky rice from XG2 came with a side of their phở broth, which was very very good. So much so that I would order something from them again just to have more broth. November’s restaurant round up will include another delicious extra I ordered from XG2. It was an something totally unrelated to the order of xôi, so I don’t feel it necessary to mention here.
Takeaways
I’ll go back to the hamburger example to underscore part of why I do this comparison series and part of why I find it interesting to do it as a foreign resident who can’t speak the language. You never know what you’re going to get! Looking for xôi gà in Saigon can lead you in many directions, and I actually found searching on the delivery apps to be much more useful than Google Maps for trying to be more strategic. But if I was just searching in general, I might have ended up with a bowl that would have been largely a surprise.
With delivery, I can’t connect with the shop to ask questions, but even at a shop, Google Translate has often proven more frustrating than useful. If you’ve read enough from me, you can guess I’m not one for surprises. Mystery protein is probably the dining surprise I am most uncomfortable with, and so I like to be as informed as possible. If you’re my opposite, then there could be many fun xôi gà adventures to be had here.
Despite initially finding the sauce at XG1 too sweet, I did end up liking the bowl. I think a second order would have me getting additional sticky rice so that I would have more of the low flavour element to balance the strong flavoured one. XG2 was balanced, but I would just remove the skin next time. And you might know that if I write “next time,” then I’ll put both on my list. Details will appear in next week’s HCMC Restaurant List update.
Perhaps biggest question: Could I use XG2 to fulfil OG Hanoi cravings? No. A spirit was there, but not strong enough to fool me into thinking I was in Hanoi. Only strong enough to have me wondering if I could have the OG again. Same same but different.
