Red Hot Flaming Pot
Let’s picture this particular lunch in an American mall food court near you. How many things can you see going wrong with this scene…a fiery paraffin ball, a red hot aluminum cooking vessel, oily boiling liquid, and raw chicken and seafood. One bump of the table and this flaming salmonella party isn’t going to end so pretty.
No, whether in Provo, Providence or points in between, America is not ready for lunchtime pyrotechnics. After Darwin has finished culling the lunchtime idiots whose meals ended with a dessert trip to the emergency room, lawsuits would simmer for years. In contrast to our sanitized surroundings back home, every meal in Vietnam is steeped with potential risk and the fourth floor food court at District 1’s Parkson’s Department Store offers the perfect dining crapshoot at Princess Hot Pot.
Raw Seafood On Top of Broth
A girl wearing some sort of pink hospital candy striper gone bad uniform delivers a plastic tray with the flaming apparatus tableside along with fish sauce and rice vermicelli. Raw seafood nestled atop vegetables awaits a dip into the red hued boiling spicy-sweet broth steeped with a nice lemongrass flavor. Unfortunately though, as mesmerizing as this dish is, tiny microscopic bits of the boiling liquid somehow manage to find a way to hit our clothes and exposed skin with a constant pinprick sensation. See, this is why I am telling you America is just not ready for fast food flambe.
At just over three bucks, it’s a cheap enough and quite entertaining meal. Just don’t wear your expensive light colored clothes.
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