Walk into Ba Bar on a Saturday or Sunday and you'll see this man standing in a cloud of steam.
His name is Mr. Chau, and on weekends he prepares a dish called Banh Cuon. It's a Vietnamese rice crèpe, filled with ground pork (Carlton Farms) and wood mushrooms, topped with slices of cha lua (Vietnamese ham) garnished with cucumbers and bean sprouts, and a generous sprinkling of the sweet dipping sauce called nuoc cham.
The trick is getting the crèpe to the proper, gossamer-thin consistency, which Mr. Chau does by grinding rice and adding just enough water to make a slurry. ("Rice only; cornstarch is cheating!" he says.) He steams a ladle of the (slightly fermented) batter on a cloth stretched across a of pot of steaming water. Taken off too soon, they fall apart; left on too long, they become chewy.
An order of three Banh Cuon is $10. Perfect for breakfast, but only on weekends.
Ba Bar, 550 12th Avenue, Seattle, 206-328-2030 :
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