It’s not much of a surprise that cơm tấm is my favourite dish in Vietnam. The smoky, charcoal grilled pork. The tangy, pickled vegetables. A side of bì (shredded pork skin), chả (a steamed meatloaf), and why not, at that point, a fried egg to complete the trifecta? With all that sitting atop a bed of steaming white rice there’s nothing left to do but add some chilli into fish sauce and drizzle it on top. There you go: a meal that makes you feel like a champion whether you have it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Thinking about it, I suppose my love for cơm tấm was somewhat inevitable, somewhat predestined given the fact that I’m English/Japanese and born in Singapore. Growing up, Hainanese chicken rice and a bowl of Japanese curry have been my favourite dishes. Cơm tấm, then, isn’t that far off. Some white rice along with meat, vegetables, and a kind of sauce. To date, I’ve probably had close to several hundred plates of this Saigonese speciality and yet I still can’t go a week without another. It never gets old. It’s no wonder why when I discover a new restaurant or street food stall serving up their own version of cơm tấm, I can’t help but wonder whether this is it. The be-all-end-all of cơm tấm joints. To many, A XỈU is just that.
I visited A XỈU on a rainy Sunday evening in late September. The rain seemed to be going on for ages at that point, gloomy days blending into one like a single, grey cloud that had erased all record of the sun’s shine from memory. Walking in, I found a seat on a table alongside the counter where two cooks were preparing a plate of cơm tấm. The owner, whose face was immortalised on a sign hanging on the wall, stood to the side. He’d nodded, smiled when I walked in but otherwise remained silent, watching over the meals being prepared and making sure they were just right.
Jazz played on the speakers. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. No other album has had as much of an impact or influence as Kind of Blue had when I started listening to it during the winter of my last year of high school in Tokyo. I wasn’t doing so well then, and Miles seemed to understand, his music a direct representation of my thoughts, feelings, Tokyo itself: the stark, humming notes reflected in the meandering clatter of the train against the tracks as I headed to another station, always trying to get to another place. Then the occasional burst from Coltrane or Cannonball Adderley’s saxophone, just like the way the city’s neon erupted against the cold night. Though the sadness has mostly faded, hearing the album in A XỈU brought back those memories and on that rainy Sunday evening in Saigon, the mood seemed to fit. I sat there while the rain drizzled outside. Groups of friends were eating around me, two people sat by themselves at the counter and though the weather outside might’ve been kind of blue, the room itself was illuminated by the warm, orange glow of lights hanging from the ceiling. It was nice, something impossibly romantic and foreign about being there. If done well, I’m of the belief that a place’s ambience can take you somewhere beyond the walls making up its room, and at A XỈU I was transported.
The music changed. Checking the TV installed in the top corner of the room, I saw Chet Baker. He was another one. Just like Miles. He seemed to know. He seemed to have tapped into some source, drank from the fountain of infinite creativity, made that deal with the devil where he bore the weight and cruelty of heroin addiction that destroyed him but also gave him the humanity to create music as soulful as his. There have been many nights listening to Chet. Many nights wondering how so much sadness could sound so beautiful. There in A XỈU, I remembered. There in A XỈU, I realised things were better than they used to be. That lonesome, song-bird quality of Chet’s voice had been released from the cage it’d once been trapped within and now was flying free.
Eventually, some food. The cơm tấm special came with all the fixings: bì, chả, and trứng, not to mention a healthy portion of kimchi which played off nicely with the smokiness of the grilled pork chop. Chilli inside a saucer of fish sauce, drizzle it all on top and I was good to go. Cơm tấm number four-hundred-and-something and still it was impossible to get tired of the dish. A XỈU’s version had something of a more refined taste compared to the stalls cooking up their pork on those busted-up grills you see on the side the road, and depending on what you’re after, that can be good or bad. I like both. Sometimes you want something quick and no-frills, with the putter of a hundred motorbikes on the street adding its own gaseous flavour to your meal. Other times you want a place like A XỈU. You can sit indoors while the rain drizzles outside, the music going from Miles to Chet and taking you all the way back, all the way someplace else in a way that only their music can. In a way that only a nice meal can.
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