Vietnamese Food Part N - crepes

It appears I've been eating Vietnamese crepes wrong for decades. A Vietnamese co-worker introduced me to them back in the 80s when I worked in Hartford (in the insurance mines). Unfortunately, he didn't show me all the accessories.

My Vietnamese food guru was shocked to learn I had been picking up pieces of my crepe and eating them with chopsticks. He said I'd been missing half the flavor. John would not be satisfied until we went off to My Sister's Crawfish* and he had a chance to demonstrate the proper technique.

To eat the crepes properly, you first take a leaf of lettuce or mustard greens and add your choice of fresh leafy herbs to it. Break off a piece of crepe and wrap in in the leaf. Dip into fish sauce (spiked with pepper sauce if desired). Eat. We had 3 type of herbs with ours; mint, fish mint**, Tia To (purple perilla). At home, John's mom serves up to 6 different herbs.

Here's a link to a list of Vietnamese herbs. Not all of these would be used with crepes.

http://vietworldkitchen.typepad.com/blog/vietnamese-herb-primer.html

*This is John's current favorite location for crepes.
** not exactly minty or fishy