The Restaurants

I'm pretty sure I'll come across as somewhat of a snob with this post (or maybe even an absolute snob), but I'm writing it anyway.  The topic is dining options (I should say lack of dining options) in Mankato/North Mankato.  When we moved here last summer the wife and I had a few concerns about leaving the Twin Cities and moving to a much more rural area, and I must admit my biggest concern was the restaurant scene.  Sure we would miss our old neighborhood, our friends, our jobs (me, not so much), and the multitude of social and cultural opportunities available.  But to be honest, as the years went by we didn't see our friends as much as we did in the past, we gave up our St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Wild tickets, and it turns out I can live without getting called at 3:00 a.m. because the full system backup failed.  The myriad of excellent dining options, however, was one thing that we took advantage of frequently.  Chances were if we had a night out without the kids, a good meal would be involved.

And it's not just the availability of nicer restaurants that we miss, but the variety as well.  Most ethnic foods you can think of were available within a 5 or 10 minute drive from our house - Japanese, Indian, Thai, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Spanish, French, Mediterranean, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Afghan, and did I mention Japanese?  There is not one sushi restaurant in Mankato.  Nada.  A restaurant at a downtown hotel hosts "sushi night" every Tuesday.  We went there once.  They only offered about 6 different sushi rolls, mostly containing cooked fish, and no nigiri sushi at all.  It wasn't very good and we haven't been back.  The city is not totally bereft of non-American food.  Our first night in town we went to an Italian place and had a favorable meal.  We've also been to a good Mexican restaurant and heard about another one that I'd like to try. And there is a Vietnamese place that we've driven past.  But as far as I know, that's about it for ethnic food.  The majority of places are the typical chain restaurants you find everywhere - Timber Lodge Steakhouse, TGI Friday's, Olive Garden, BW3, etc.  The internet search I did for "best Mankato restaurants" returned several different lists.  Among the best/top rated restaurants on the various lists were:

• #4 - Papa Murphy's Take 'n Bake Pizza
• #5 - Applebee's
• #7 - Cold Stone Creamery
• #7 (on a different list) - Old Country Buffet (I don't know whether to laugh or cry)
• #12 - Noodles & Co.
• #14 - Chipotle

Unfortunately, that's no joke.  I half expected to see Arby's (which I do like by the way) listed.  Now you see what we're up against.

A couple months ago, the wife and I went to a place that was supposed to be a nice steakhouse.  It was fine. Your standard steak-and-potatoes-with-a-side-salad kind of place.  The steaks were nothing special, and my impression is they're all cooked to the same level of doneness regardless of the diner's preference.  There was one silver lining in the dinner cloud that night.  On the wine list they had a Bordeaux but didn't list the vintage.  We asked the waitress what it was and then had to explain what "vintage" meant.  It turns out that it was from 2005 and priced very reasonably.  That wine salvaged our night.  It was like finding water on the moon (or at least like finding a great wine at an average steak joint).

Olive Garden is a decent-enough place and we've gone there 3 or 4 times since moving.  I suppose you could say it's our new go-to restaurant in Mankato.  During our last visit the waitress suggested we try their wine of the day or special or whatever, Riunite.  I had to stifle a laugh as I could only think of those cheesy 1980s "Riunite on Ice" commercials like this one.  Here are a few more:  It goes great with hot dogs!,  A fun day in NYC!,  Burgers Tacos Chicken Salad Whatever!, Cooler Anyone!, and Even Susan Lucci loves her some Riunite!  I could write an entire post on these commercials alone.  They're so awful you can't help but watch.

Even cooking at home is different now.  Back in Minneapolis, when we wanted to grill something for dinner we could take advantage of the butcher shop within walking distance of the house.  I recently found a butcher shop in town and have been there a couple of times.  I've also tried the meat counters at the local grocery stores.  I found that we now have to plan ahead to ensure that the store will have what we want for a particular meal.  On a few occasions I haven't been able to get what I was looking for without making 2 or 3 stops - beef short ribs or pork belly for example - not overly exotic items that I think would be difficult to find.

The funny thing is that I wasn't raised on gourmet food.  I grew up eating beans and hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, etc.  I can remember going to McDonald's and making my dad order plain hamburgers for me.  Plain!  I've never ordered a plain hamburger myself, so maybe the quality improvement process has reduced the wait time over the years, but I can tell you that back then it took them a looong time to produce a plain hamburger.  And there was no way I would accept ordering a regular hamburger and simply scraping off the toppings.  It had to be plain.  I don't know how my dad put up with me.

My family went out for meals on occasion, usually to Lil' Chef or The Nugget (I can find no evidence on the internet that this place even existed).  When we wanted to get fancy we usually went to the Highland House, or another place under the same ownership, Gus'.  They were good but nothing extravagant.  At Gus' (which has since been renamed Tomato Brothers) we always ordered the same thing - bread sticks, Greek salad, and pizza.  A couple of summers ago I went to Tomato Brothers with my parents for the first time in probably 20 years and the food was exactly the same, and I loved it.

There are probably plenty of places in Mankato that families love and will remember forever, just like the ones I went to as a kid.  It's the "foodie" type places that are lacking here.  Our Mankato friends probably think I sound like a whiny prima donna.  It's just that after living in Minneapolis for so long, we became accustomed to having many terrific dining options available.  I'm sure that uber whiny prima donnas in cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York have similar attitudes toward Minneapolis, so it's all relative.  I guess I'll just have to accept that the restaurants we love still exist, but now we just have to drive a little farther to get to them.

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You may remember me discussing in a previous post the desire to drop some weight (don't ask).  I mentioned I would sample various light beers to see which I would adopt in support of this effort.  About a week later I voiced my disdain for those bland potables, admitting I don't like their taste and vowing to stay away from them altogether.  Well, it turns out that I'm not alone in preferring to drink beer with flavor.  According to this article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, craft beer (that is beer that tastes like something) sales rose 9.6 percent over the last year.  During the same time period, sales of domestic premium beer, e.g. Budweiser, declined 6.1 percent and premium light beer, e.g. Bud Light, fell 2 percent.  It's nice when one's judgments are validated.

Kampai!

The Bricks

I guess it's about time that I broach this subject.  Of course I'm referring to LEGOS, or LEGO bricks as the LEGO Group prefers they be called.  Well, I've done the "LEGO dance" enough times after stepping on one of those pointy little bastards that I'll call them whatever I like.  Not to mention I've known them as LEGOS since I knew what LEGOS were, as does everyone else in the free world who's not employed by the LEGO Group.  Plus it's easier and more fun to say LEGOS, and every time I do I'm reminded of waffles.  So LEGOS it is.

While doing research for this post I found that the LEGO Group was founded in Denmark in 1934 by Ole Kirk Christiansen (oh yah, sounds like a good Minnesotan - you betcha).  Good ole Ole took the first two letters from each of the Danish words "leg" and "godt", meaning "play well", to form the name LEGO.  It's just an amazingly cool coincidence that the word "lego" in Latin means "I put together".  Another neat coincidence that you might not be aware of is that the word "viagra" in Latin means "Erector Set".  Among LEGO fun facts listed on the company website are the following:

• Approximately 19 billion LEGO elements are made every year, equivalent to approximately 2 million elements an hour or 36,000 a minute.
• Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would encircle the Earth more than five times.
• Approximately seven LEGO sets are sold each second.
• Approximately 54,658 LEGOS are hidden in the carpeting of my house waiting to be stepped on.

I loved playing with LEGOS as a kid.  I remember playing with them for hours in my room, where I was frequently (and may I add unfairly) sent by my mother after having allegedly committed various transgressions reported by my sister.  I had a couple of the universal sets as well as sets for an air ambulance, go-kart, and moon base.  After I grew up and moved out of the house, my parents stored those LEGOS in their basement for many years, and when I bought my first house they were all too happy to give them back to me.  The poor LEGOS again sat unused for quite a while until I passed them on to the boy when he was about 3.  At that time he was already a LEGO expert after having played for a couple years with the Quatro bricks (really big and easy to see on the floor) and then the Duplo bricks (smaller than the Quatros, but still readily visible when set as traps by naughty children trying to cripple their parents), which are designed for the tiny, fumbling hands of toddlers.  The boy's favorite thing to do with the Quatros and Duplos was to have me repeatedly build giant towers for him to destroy like Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo.

Yet another LEGO fun fact states that on average there are 62 LEGO bricks for every person on earth.  If that's true, then I'm certain the boy owns as many LEGOS as the entire population of Luxembourg.  That's because over the years, the boy's infatuation with LEGOS has only grown.  I'm fairly confident that his mother and I could get rid of all his other toys and he wouldn't even notice.  I'm also fairly confident that he could survive several years of solitary confinement in a Turkish prison unscathed if he were allowed to bring a couple LEGO sets with him.  It's ridiculous how many sets he owns - I'd guess there are around 25 or so.  Every Christmas, birthday, and visit from the grandparents results in the acquisition of a new set or sets.  In fact, the wife and I made a pact with the boy last month.  He is already an avid reader, but to spur him on even further we promised to buy him a $50 LEGO set if he reads 300 books before the 4th of July.  At this point it looks like he's going to make it - little bugger.

One thing bothers me about the boy's use of his LEGOS - he fails to respect the integrity of the individual sets!  When he first opens a set, he humors me and builds the model according to the instructions.  After that, all bets are off.  He mixes up the pieces from different sets and builds all manner of mutant projects.  Good guys' heads are put on bad guys' bodies and vice versa, Star Wars clones are melded with Space Police, Bionicles mingle with Toy Story guys, he attaches blue bricks to yellow bricks, pieces get lost (and then are sometimes found when I step on them).  When I handed my old sets over to him, they still contained all of the original pieces, each in the original box and including instructions (so I was a bit anal in my younger days - sue me).  These sets and many of his own now cannot be completed because pieces are missing.  But you should see his Darth Lightyear.  As long as he's having fun (I guess).

In true LEGO-loving fashion, the boy's favorite place on Earth is Legoland.  We've been to the California theme park twice, once before the girl's arrival and once afterward.  It's actually a full-blown amusement park and, in my opinion, beats the hell out of Sea World (especially now that Shamu is killing people).  While there are roller coasters, water rides, shows, and LEGOS for sale everywhere, my favorite section of the park is Mini Land or Tiny Town or LEGOville or whatever they call the area that contains the scale model LEGO replicas of actual places, such as the Las Vegas strip, New York City, the Taj Mahal, the White House, New Orleans' French Quarter, etc.  I could hang out there for hours.  And I'm sure I'll have a chance to do just that in the near future as I recently read that a brand new, biggest-ever Legoland will open in Winter Haven, Florida at the end of 2011.  Opening day, here we come!

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On April 7th, the August Schell Brewing Company is releasing a new beer, Grain Belt Nordeast, which is named after our old stomping grounds, Northeast Minneapolis!  I'm a tad miffed that after living there for 10 years and having no beers to our name, this momentous event is occurring only 7 months later and I'm missing it.  And apparently there is some debate over the name of the new beer.  You see, Northeast Minneapolis is often referred to as "Nordeast" because that's how the Eastern Europeans who settled there in the early 1900's used to pronounce it.  While many folks view the term as a tribute to the history of that part of the city, other politically-correct ninnies consider it a pejorative.  I find this similar to when people oppose and protest the naming of sports teams after Native American tribes, when the actual Native Americans themselves consider it an honor.  The way I see it, most of the people who said "Nordeast" in the first place are probably long gone, so they won't be offended anyway.

Na zdrowie!

The Ambulance

I had never before needed to call 911.  About two weeks ago the girl came down with something (most likely from some snotty kid at the community play place) and threw up after dinner.  She also had a fever.  I learned of the fever and barfing via text messages from the wife as I was enjoying pre-game beers before heading to the Avett Brothers concert in Minneapolis.  Seems like it's only when either the wife or I are out of town that the kids get sick.  Anyway, I texted back my condolences and didn't think much about it, assuming it was a typical "puking, fever, treat-with-Children's-Tylenol-for-a-few-days-and-everything-goes-back-to-normal" illness.  I returned home the following afternoon and the girl seemed OK.  The wife was administering the 4-6 hour medication cycle - give medicine, fever goes down, wait 4-6 hours for the fever to return, give medicine, fever goes down, etc.  Nothing different than what we'd previously experienced numerous times with both the boy and the girl.  However, on this occasion things would be different.

About two hours after putting her to bed, we heard the girl crying.  I went to her room to check what was the matter and arrived just in time to catch her refunded dinner in my hands.  After several years of practice and way too many loads of laundry run in the wee hours, I'm actually getting pretty good at this.  And it's really not as disgusting as you might think - generally more liquid than solid at this age.  The difficult part is not spilling any as you're hustling to the bathroom to get rid of it.  So the wife decided to stay with the girl in her room in case she got sick again.  I figured I'd wind down with some mindless TV and then hit the sack myself.  About 30 minutes later, I heard the wife calling my name.  I headed to the girl's room and found her convulsing in my wife's arms.  She was making a gagging noise, and at first I thought she might have the dry heaves.  I quickly realized that this was more serious, and while it seemed like an eternity, the seizure probably lasted for about a minute.  After she stopped shaking, the girl went completely limp and was unresponsive.  At this point the wife and I were both pretty freaked out and I called 911.

I must say that the 911 operator was very composed and helped to calm us down.  The first folks to arrive at the house (I'd guess between 5 and 10 minutes after the call - it's all a blur) were a couple of police officers, followed shortly thereafter by the paramedics.  Upon seeing the girl they weren't in a panic, so I was less worried about the situation.  The initial diagnosis was that the girl had a febrile seizure, which apparently happens at some point to approximately 5% of all children.  And normally they're not very serious, despite the fact that they scare the shit out of the parents.  They're caused by rapid body temperature changes (either up or down) associated with fevers.  The important thing is to make sure the child doesn't choke or fall off the bed during the event.  About 45 minutes later, the girl was still pretty out of if, although she occasionally opened her eyes and seemed to be aware that we were present.  The paramedics suggested taking her to the hospital to get checked out and confirm that nothing more serious was going on.  So I helped load the girl into the ambulance as the wife followed behind in our car and I stayed home with the boy (who thankfully slept through the entire ordeal).

A couple hours later, the wife returned home with the girl who was sleeping peacefully in her car seat.  The initial tests at the ER were all negative, but the wife was told to make a follow-up appointment with the doc to try to find the cause of the fever.  It turns out that the girl had a UTI and was prescribed an antibiotic.  By the way, I was shocked when the pharmacy informed me that the medicine cost $100 AFTER the insurance portion was covered and would have been $400 if we didn't have insurance (insert health care rant here).  I called the doc's office and asked if there was a suitable substitute and ended up with a different drug that cost $8.  Are you kidding me?!  Why would the doc prescribe the $100 drug in the first place??  I guess that's a topic for another blog.

So now almost two weeks later the girl is thankfully back to her old self.  While our experience wasn't technically an "emergency", I was pleased to see the kind of the response we could expect to receive in the event of a more serious situation.  I have to commend all the medical professionals involved for their quick response, competence, and calm, professional actions (minus the doc's original prescription) and now have an even greater respect for the folks whose jobs are to take care of people in trouble.

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Forget the beer for now.  I need something a bit stronger.

Whew.

The Sports

I like sports.  I love sports.  Playing, watching, listening to radio broadcasts, whatever.  I played organized baseball and hockey from the time I was 6 through high school.  Then in college I moved on to softball and less competitive men's league hockey.  Around the age of 12 I also started playing golf.  I still skate, but after a couple of major knee surgeries I've unfortunately had to "retire" from hockey and probably won't play softball again either.  After moving to Minnesota, the frequency of my golf outings has decreased dramatically (I've probably averaged 2 rounds per year over the last 8 years), but I still like to play.  As a matter of fact, last spring a few buddies and I and went to Myrtle Beach for a golf weekend and had so much fun we decided to make it an annual event.  Alas, the second annual trip, originally scheduled for this June, has been canceled due to to job schedule conflicts (sigh).

Sports buff that I am, I was thrilled when the boy was born, thinking about all the fun times we might have together at various sporting events (obviously I was also thrilled to have someone to eventually take over my household chores, vehicle maintenance, tax preparation, etc.).  Just like the countless high school, college, and professional games I attended over the years with my dad - scrimmages; regular season games; playoff games; the NHL All-Star Game; Eastern Michigan football games (mostly losses); baseball games at Tiger Stadium, Fenway Park, and Wrigley Field; hockey games at the Olympia, Joe Louis Arena, and Boston Garden; Wrestlemania III at the Pontiac Silverdome (I still can't believe Hulk Hogan body slammed Andre the Giant!!).  All of the dateless Saturday nights in high school watching Hockey Night in Canada on TV together.  Not to mention all of the games he watched me play, including those during his many years as my baseball coach.

So now the boy is at the age where he can watch sports with me and understand what's happening.  I've "encouraged" him to root for Michigan State (over the objections of the wife, whose siblings all attended the University of Michigan).  And I'm happy to report that he's definitely a State fan, although his indoctrination hasn't been overly difficult based on the performances of the two universities' athletic teams over the last few seasons.  The deciding factor may have been our attending the Spartans' exciting basketball victory over USC at the Metrodome during last year's run to the national championship game.

In addition to watching games, the wife and I are giving the boy opportunities to play various sports to see which ones he enjoys.  So far he has taken swimming and ice skating lessons and played in a kindergarten floor hockey league.  Next week he starts indoor soccer and this spring it will be tee ball.  If his skating skills develop, he should be ready for hockey next fall.  Regardless of whether or not he plays in a league, I'm planning to build a rink like this one in our back yard.  While I really hope he takes to hockey and will be at least a bit disappointed if he doesn't, I'm not going to force him.  It's up to the boy to decide in which sports he'd like to participate long term, if any.  I'm not going to raise another "Bred To Be A Superstar" Todd Marinovich:

He has never eaten a Big Mac or an Oreo or a Ding Dong. When he went to birthday parties as a kid, he would take his own cake and ice cream to avoid sugar and refined white flour. He would eat homemade catsup, prepared with honey. He did consume beef but not the kind injected with hormones. He ate only unprocessed dairy products. He teethed on frozen kidney. When Todd was one month old, Marv was already working on his son's physical conditioning. He stretched his hamstrings. Pushups were next. Marv invented a game in which Todd would try to lift a medicine ball onto a kitchen counter. Marv also put him on a balance beam. Both activities grew easier when Todd learned to walk. There was a football in Todd's crib from day one. "Not a real NFL ball," says Marv. "That would be sick; it was a stuffed ball."

I could never imagine saying this 20 years ago, but I won't even mind if he ends up being a soccer player.  My dislike for the sport was established during my time working for the city recreation department when I was in high school and college (which, for the record, is the best job I ever had or ever will have).  One of our responsibilities was to chalk the athletic fields, and just between you and me, I made the straightest lines out of the entire crew - no string necessary.  Chalking baseball fields is one thing.  However, soccer fields are another animal altogether.  Because they're so big, the chalker must be refilled several times to line an entire field.  It's great when your buddy is following you around with the truck to provide additional limestone.  It's a major pain in the ass when you're on your own - chalk until chalker is empty, walk back to truck, drive truck to chalker, fill up chalker, chalk until chalker is empty, walk back to truck, drive truck to chalker, fill up chalker, etc.  It was very monotonous.  It didn't help that those little soccer twerps always littered the sidelines with orange peels during the games.  The garbage cans were right there!  Anyway, all of us on the field crew HATED soccer.  In the years since then I have grown to appreciate and even enjoy watching soccer on occasion (but not as much as curling).  I believe the tide turned when I was working in Paris and got sucked into the European championship euphoria with my French, Belgian, German, Spanish, and Dutch colleagues.  Europe is soccer (or football as they say) crazy, and it was really a fun atmosphere watching the games at bars after work despite having to put up with the French cheering for "Les Bleus" with their noses held high in the air.  Between my Euro 2000 experience and watching the last few World Cup tournaments, my disdain for soccer has subsided.  I'm actually somewhat looking forward to the next World Cup that will take place this summer.

Anyway, I do understand that there's more to life than sports.  The boy is free to pursue whatever extracurricular activities he desires, and I will fully support whatever he wants to do (unless he takes up ice dancing).  And if the boy ends up sports averse, there's always the girl to fall back on.  It looks like she's shaping up to be either a goalie or a linebacker.

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One time in college a roommate of mine attempted to brew his own beer.  He ended up producing a yeasty, brown concoction that, in my opinion, tasted less like beer and more like the results of leaving a loaf of bread in a bucket of water for way too long.  However, I and the rest of the roommates did our best to choke down the swill and told him how great it was (pretty sure we didn't ask for refills).  Ever since that episode I've been wary of trying to brew beer myself.  But with my recent renunciation of light beer and focus on tasty, craft beers, I'm considering giving this a shot.  Perhaps before going it alone I should spend a weekend at a brewery where they show you the ropes, as described in this New York Times article.  Looks like fun!

Salud!

The Interpreter

Over the last couple of months the girl has really started speaking a lot.  Now whether what she says is understandable depends on if you're me, the wife, the parent of an almost 2-year old, or anybody else.  Those of you who fall into the first three categories have a fighting chance.  Anybody else would probably have better luck understanding the clicks and clacks of the Kalahari Bushmen (go rent The Gods Must Be Crazy if you haven't seen it).  Even for the wife and me it's usually pretty difficult to comprehend what she's saying the first time she says a word or phrase.  It's only after asking her several times "What?" or "Excuse me?" that we get it.  And we often must have her point to what she's talking about (if applicable).  Lately I've felt like we are speaking in tongues and live in the Tower of Babel.  You can call me Nimrod.

What we really need around here to decipher what the girl says is a baby-talk version of the German Enigma machine (it's probably a safe bet to say that Google is already working on such a device).  A tool like that would be useful to us because, in addition to speaking like her mouth is full of animal crackers (which is often the case), the girl has a slight lisp (which by the way is very cute) and understandably can't yet pronounce all the letters of the alphabet.  So the "k" sound becomes a "t" sound and the word "book" is "boot", "cookie" is "tootie", "milk" is "milt", and "Corn Pops" become "Torn Pops".  And hilariously "Okay!" becomes "Otay!", which every time she says it makes me think of Eddie Murphy's Buckwheat character (yes, another Eddie Murphy SNL reference).  Another one she can't pronounce is the "g" sound, which becomes a "d" sound.  So "Goldbug" is now "Doldbud".

Compounding our miscommunication is the fact that the girl sometimes omits the first syllables from words or even skips entire words at the beginning of phrases.  For example, "oatmeal" becomes "meal" and "again" becomes "dain".  Her favorite show, The Backyardigans, is "Dens".  The book we currently read 17 times per day is Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go.  Our friend Doldbud is hidden somewhere on every page, similar to Waldo in the Where's Waldo books.  So when trying to locate him and asking where he is, the girl says "Doldbud, are you?".

One word that nobody has trouble understanding her say is "no", or more often "NO!".  And recently "no" has morphed into "no way".  Last night we had a friend spend the night at the house.  The hope is that one day our basement will contain a guest room, but since it's still unfinished the girl's room currently doubles as our guest room.  When people stay with us, the girl gets the boot and sleeps in her Pack 'N Play in the TV room while the guest or guests sleep in her crib (actually we have a double bed in there).  In the past this has never really been an issue.  We go through our usual bedtime routine and the girl sleeps just fine.  For some reason she would have none of it last night.  When it was time to hit the hay, the girl refused to lay down and repeated "No way!" over and over and over.  The wife and I tried all of the usual tricks - singing songs, giving her more milk, playing the "Pointing Game" in which we mention an object in the room and the girl points to it.  Nothing worked.  I even tried responding with "Way!" a la Wayne and Garth, but the girl was not amused.  Eventually she calmed down and went to sleep (after we moved her back into her own room and relegated our guest to the couch in the TV room), but then she woke up and 2:00 a.m. and I sat with her for another 45 minutes of "No way!"s before she went down for the rest of the night.

The word games are all very cute but can sometimes be frustrating, even more so for the girl when she's really trying to tell us something.  But I know this won't last forever, so for now I'm just enjoying it.  She probably won't even want to talk to me in a few years.  As for those of you who should engage her in conversation over the next few months, if you can remember the key points from above, you may actually have a shot at understanding the girl.  Otherwise bring your Enigma machine.

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Most people are familiar with European countries' penchant for brewing and drinking beer.  According to the New York Times, a southeast Asian country is now a formidable beer-drinker's travel destination.  Surprisingly (at least to me), that country is Vietnam.  This article highlights the history of beer in Vietnam and lists some of the brews available there.  Particularly intriguing is the bia hoi ("fresh beer"), which the article states is unpasteurized and unpreserved and normally drank the same day that it's produced.  Interestingly, it's often sucked down first thing in the morning before, the locals say, the flavor begins to decline.  And how about this - a pint costs less than a quarter!  Sounds like a trip to Hanoi is in order.

Đũ má mày!