Tacos de Buche

Did a write-up for the Guns and Tacos blog. Thanks to him for publishing it. It was about my recent experience with pork esophagus tacos.

Dim Sum To Go

Dim Sum to Go

In the Viet Hoa Shopping Center at Beechnut and the Beltway

I have been exploring different stuff in this shopping center for some time. Other places in this center are the Alpha place and the Parisian Bakery II. I like dim sum, so the idea of getting some whenever I want to appeals to me. I go fairly often for dim sum to the Kim Son on 59 at the Fountains. I had tried this place in the Viet Hoa center a year or two ago, so I decided to try it again. I got some shrimp xiu mai, some pork xiu mai, and some rolls that had pork wrapped in super thin sheets of tofu. I have been told that doing stuff in these tofu sheets is labor-intensive; I would be interested to hear what someone with more knowledge of the subject has to say. These steamed bean curd sheets, were wrapped around pork that also had garlic mixed with it; I liked their flavor. The shrimp xiu mai was quite light in texture, and the pork xiu mai was good as well. The xiu mai was pretty small in size compared to most dim sum that I have had, but the price was less.

While I prefer to go to Kim Son on the weekends for dim sum, this is a cheap, fast snack or meal on the way home for me. I assume that they are selling their products to other restaurants or for catering as well. They are always super busy making stuff in the back, but I have never seen another customer in there the three or four times I have been. They have a decent sized menu, but I have yet to try anything else.

Olympic Bakery

First Blog Post
I have been kicking the idea around of a doing a food blog for a while. Unfortunately a rough year coupled with a one year masters program got in the way. A fellow food blogger recommended that I give it a shot. So here is the first post. Thanks Bruce!

I tried out the Olympic Bakery a couple of weeks ago. It is on the toll way at Beechnut, in the Viet Hoa shopping center. I believe that I went to something in this same space a few years back, that I was not impressed with, called the Parisian Bakery. While the Olympic Bakery does not have any bread in the place, the food I had was good and fresh. It looks like the new owners just took out “Parisian” from the sign and stuck “Olympic” in there. The news was on one TV, while another TV plays Olympic videos non-stop. I got a Bun Thit Nuong which was a huge portion, with lots of fresh vegetables and even some herbs as well. I liked that that they added mint in the dish. There was a big dollop of what looked to be a freshly made chili paste. I got some extra paste to put in my Nuoc Cham sauce. The egg rolls on it were OK. The pork was pretty good, and had been cooked previously. It was obvious that the cook heated it back up on the griddle before it was served.


Price was 5 bucks and change before tax if I am not mistaken.


The menu is limited, but they have daily specials. The special that day was a duck soup, but I wanted something that was comfort food, and Bun Thit Nuong is in that department for me.


For Vietnamese basics, this is a good place. It is easily accessible off the toll way for me, and was quick and clean. Staff was quite nice and helpful. They apparently have “expresso” according to the sign outside, but I bet this sign is a holdover from the previous owners. I didn’t see any espresso machine, but they did have cà phê sữa đá (Vietnamese Iced Coffee).