By Jim Duncan CVFDude@aol.com

Sometimes you win by losing. If U.S.-backed forces had won the war in Vietnam, where would today's budget diner go for true scratch cooking in America? But because the Viet Cong won, hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian refugees exported a rich cuisine that still does things the old fashioned way. Their timing was perfect. When the Vietnamese Diaspora began, America was converting to fast-food-nation status. Now processed foods account for three-fourths of all food sales and few chefs outside four-star kitchens bother cooking anything from scratch.

In fact, scratch cooking has been defined down. Most folks think they are "cooking from scratch" when they mix canned ingredients with instant stock mixes and maybe add a little something fresh. Probably because Southeast Asia was a French colony, Vietnamese cuisine is the slowest in Asia. Instant noodle soup mixes may have conquered Japan, Korea and China, but in Des Moines, Nga Tran thinks that eight hours of simmering is way too fast for her stocks.

"That is what the professionals told us when we started the restaurant, 'cook the bones eight hours,' but my children know better. If they like it the way we make it at home, cooking 24 hours, that is what I want do for my customers, too," she says of her rich beef broths, which she makes from whole shins that have been cut into small sections.

They transport her pho, the "sine qua non" of Vietnamese cooking, into epiphanies on the tongue. Nga's family (two daughters also help run the café) came to America from Hue, via Laos and France. She describes her cuisine as northern Vietnamese crossed with Laotian. She served fresh-sliced beef pho with a cut of meat too tender to be out after dark. Rice noodles, fresh lime, Thai basil, chili peppers and bean sprouts finish our favorite version of pho, others are available with seafood, meatballs, tripe and won tons.

Because of the hot weather, we've been visiting 777 for cooler treats lately. Tran aptly calls her "bun" (vermicelli) menu "salads." They combine cold cucumber slices with diced lettuce, cool vermicelli, fresh bean sprouts, mint, cilantro, different kinds of basil and scratch-made lemon sauce. We are partial to the grilled pork version, but they come with shrimp, meatballs, grilled beef and egg rolls.

We tried her angry catfish last week and found it a great bargain. She used a gentle chili marinade before wok frying a whole fish to a contrast of textures - chewy outside, soft and juicy inside - with perfect cheeks. She serves that, for just $6.95, smothered in caramelized onions and dried chilies, again gentle ones, and surrounded by ornately carved carrots and daikon that has been pickled in a brine far sweeter than those used in Korean or Japanese treatments - hot and sweet and sour and salty.

One experimental appetizer worth keeping gave an egg wash and deep-frying treatment to a yolkless boiled egg stuffed with potsticker mix. We know what you're thinking. We didn't think so either, but it surprised us enough to order more. Nga's appetizer menu also offered shredded pigskin egg rolls, in which the pork skins are rendered soft as noodles, in rice wrappers. Another spring roll was stuffed with whole shrimp, for less than $1.50 a piece.

Nga devised a new summer treat, tentatively called "friendship dessert," that mixes several kinds of Jell-O with tapioca pearls, two kinds of coconut and coconut milk. When you stir the rainbow concoction, you have a kaleidoscope in a glass bowl.
Thai, Lao and Chinese dishes are also available. CV

Pho 777
1541 6th Ave.
Open Mon. - Sat. 10 - 9, Sun. 10 -7

Food News

Café Di Scala opens Friday in the old Chat Noir location at 644 18th St. Owner-chef Tony Lemmo remodeled the Victorian café with some serious lighting upgrades and spectacular woodwork, particularly the inlaid olive bar by local sculptor Gabe Lueders. Lemmo has Italian restaurant blood on both sides of his family. His mom is a Lacona. His paternal grandparents owned the short-lived, much loved Lemmo's.

The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Drake's Agricultural Law Center brought Todd Murphy to town recently. Murphy developed Farmers' Diner, a restaurant buying most of its food directly from local farmers and small-scale food producers. His original diner in Vermont drew praise from The New York Times, Gourmet and National Public Radio. Murphy's press release said he started with $240,000 in capital, and reached the break-even point within one year. But in Iowa, he was pitching investors on a seven-year plan for profitability. He has a franchise model that clusters four to five Farmers' Diners around a central commissary, for processing. Locals described his business plan as "naìve" and "confused."

Corn sweetener consumption is growing as fast as obesity. In 1967, Americans ate an average of 114 pounds of sugar and sweeteners a year, almost all of it as raw or refined sugar. Today average sugar consumption has risen to 142 pounds annually, with nearly half of it coming from high-fructose corn syrup.

Food Quote

"Darwin was wrong when he talked about the survival of the fittest: it's really the survival of the healthy enough to get by. As it says in the Good Book, the last shall sometimes be first, the meek shall inherit the earth and the chubby will get extra biscuits at the breakfast buffet."

David Brooks, commenting on a Centers for Disease Control & Prevention report that found overweight people live longer than those of normal body weight.

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