July 12th 2018

Today I flew back from Berlin, but not before having one last meal at Bares. Bares (pronounced Bar-res) is a Vietnamese restaurant around the corner from the office. I’ve eaten there three times this week.

I don’t know what it is about Vietnamese cuisine, but it makes me forget all of the fussiness about food that I spent my formative years formulating.

I never ate veg. I never ate fruit. I never ate salad.

Vietnamese food somehow forces me to enjoy two of those things:

And not just endure; enjoy.

That’s basically a bowl full of salad but I absolutely devoured it, which is completely unlike me.

Serve me that in any other restaurant and I’ll ask what you did with my steak and where you hid my chips. But serve me it in a Vietnamese place and I’ll wolf it down without stopping to ask what’s in it.

I’ve banged on about this before, but it’s the freshness of the veg and salad that makes it not just bearable, but enjoyable. And the zinginess of the flavouring.

If you gave me that dish a year ago there’s not a chance that I would have considered eating it. But look at me now. Growing up and eating my vegetables and shit.

And also salad.

Until tomorrow, but still never fruit.

Jacn