Going out for dinner on a Sunday night feels weirdly decadent. Sunday nights should be for washing your hair and making packed lunches, for ironing shirts and recharging your Blackberry. But instead of doing any of those things this week, we decided to go out for dinner! Yay us. We're crazy.
We headed out to Namo in Hackney, which is in the heart of too-cool-for-school Victoria Park village and a nice, longish walk from our house. It was busy for a Sunday night, with nearly every table taken.
There was beer.
To start, I ordered my favourite of all Vietnamese dishes - summer rolls. These came wrapped in rice paper and were stuffed with green herbs and fat prawns. They were a touch on the under-seasoned side, but on the other hand you could really taste the freshness of the ingredients. And they came with a lovely, dark, peanut-scattered bowl of dipping sauce.
To follow, I chose bun xa - which I don't know how to pronounce, but I do know how to eat.
Three out of the four of us ordered this dish, because it sounded so delicious on the menu. And it didn't disappoint. We each had a biggish bowl of thin, slippery rice noodles, topped with soft fried onions, lemongrass, meat, and chillies. I chose chicken, which was perfectly cooked and tender. B and Jonny went for chargrilled pork (a good call - for some reason, the pork came with some bonus mini spring rolls on top. Jealous!). I picked out the chillies, being a bit of a wuss about spiciness, but B manfully left them in.
Gail had a chicken and coconut curry, which she described as a bit like a Thai green curry. It looked yummy.
At the end of the meal, they gave us some jelly beans wrapped in a twist of paper as a thank you. I'm a sucker for little details like that. Look at the cute label!
Happy Sunday everyone. Let's be decadent more often.
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