TRA VINH BROKEN RICE & PORK CHOP

There is comfort food and then there is comfort food. After two weeks in India, my comfort food was not a chicken curry, not my last supper meal. When we landed back in Perth, my mum had a batch of bolognaise waiting for us. It was a good welcome home meal. Pasta is one kind of comfort to me. But, I also had another itch to scratch, which was Vietnamese. As soon as I arrived, I could have gone a banh mi. I could have gone pho. I could have even gone fresh spring rolls. There are many dishes I love that also go beyond these three popular ones.

My favourite Vietnamese restaurant in Perth is Tra Vinh. I like the original one on Brisbane Street in Northbridge, from the white leather Louis Vuitton chairs to the television playing Home and Away in the background. They are warm and welcoming and reliable. But more than that, they are delicious and know what to do when it comes to food. Of all the dishes there that I love to eat, I love to eat their broken rice with pork chop the most. There have been times when I have craved it for days in a row, returning again and again, eating it back to back like sporting teams who are hungry for yet more championships.

It was Thursday, four days after my return from India, when I got back to Tra Vinh and that broken rice and pork chop dish. The day was sunny (as always) with the sky being an endless blue that stretched onto the horizon. There was no traffic and no pollution. There were no crowds on men on the street watching you walk by, drinking cups of chai. Here, it was clean and empty, occasionally a person making their way slowly to an empty bus stop to wait longer still before gliding off into the distance. There is infrastructure here but very few who use it. That is what it means when they say it is capital rich. In any case, I have digressed. I was looking for my pork chop.

The pork chop here is superior not only because of the strength of the component parts, but also because of how it harmonises together. The chop is golden, pliant and caramel; the shredded pork is stringy, salty, and gloriously noodled; the meatloaf is soft and springy and salty yum yum; the rice is broken (as was advertised) and does not disappoint; the egg is fried but the yolk still runs away when the fork comes to coax it out to play; the pickled radish and carrot is vingary and sweet; the cucumber is generously portioned and refreshing; the sweet chilli dipping sauce is spot on if not perfect; and the pork broth with coriander soup is the thing you need to wash it down. I love this dish for all its simplicity and complexity, for how it fits together and makes you wish that comfort was always like this, never a disappointment. I love it. Home is where the stomach is, and, as you can see from the before and after images, nothing was wasted. * Please note in the top image that the rice is hiding under the cornucopia of other elements (this is a generous plate of deliciousness).

I was thinking of Nam Le's The Boat too as I ate this meal. And what it is to be at home, and what it is to be in the world. In that collection, you get a sense of the cosmopolitan way of living, which is to say it is rootless and moves around with a sense of disengagement. I do not necessarily take issue with what that might be, though I, of course, live somewhat differently. I like to feel connected, which is not to say rooted or settled or simply transplanted. I like the idea that comfort is transient but that we also take some of it with us, no matter where we end up or what we have done. Being back in Perth, at least for the moment, gave me the sense of how different it is to Bombay, for instance. And yet, there is always pleasure to be gained from eating our way back to health and happiness. I like this to take stock of all the flavours on offer from chicken curry to spaghetti bolognaise to broken rice with pork chop. All of them belong at the table I like to sit at and think about the world from. From tomorrow, there will always be other dishes on offer, but for now I was glad to be at home where there were also good condiments.