Wednesday

Over the last two weeks we've introduced Sunshine's mom to some of our favorite local restaurants. Back before she arrived we'd made plans to try one new restaurant a week, a plan enacted to combat my tendency to always patronize the same six comfy places. At Deli Saigon, I'm handed the menu pre-opened to the tomato-and-celery noodle soup page. At Luna L'Atunna, the owner asks us how we think the furniture should be arranged. Here is the evidence that we've dropped into a predictable pattern less than five months after arriving. Walking around the block the other day, Bet noted that we could dine in a new restaurant every day and never eat our way out of our own neighborhood. This is true enough; but it's disheartening to imagine the next nineteen months without the yakisoba place I love, Au Parc salads, or my tied-for-favorite two Indian diaspora restaurants. Our other plan will force us into trying about eighty more new restaurants before October oh-nine, bringing our score to something over a hundred local places before shipping home. Not too shabby. This week, we got a head start on our scheme by introducing our tourist to a number of new-to-us restaurants too--my favorite being Monday night's dinner with our friends the plant biologist, the man who studies bats, the espionage enthusiast, and the artist. It was like the beginning of a mystery. Night fell in District Two as we walked to Restaurant 13, located at the dead end of a dark backstreet guttering into the Sài Gòn river. Our table couldn't have rested more than a foot above the dark river water lapping at the railing; passing speedboats nearly slopped us with their wash. Dinner ranged from garlicky bok choy to French fries. The company was excellent. [Cavin]