I love Vietnamese food. The perfect blend of far eastern spices and flavours, and French culinary know-how. Admittedly blended through a few hundred years of colonialism, but hey you don’t just leave the baby lying there when you’ve thrown it out with the bathwater. So anyway, on Saturday we popped in to Cay Tre, on Old Street, which is probably one of the more esoteric Vietnamese restaurant in London (ie its menu has a few dishes you won’t normally get here – and are trickier to serve). This review from Jay Rayner covers many of the dishes we had, and some I usually have (the La Vong fish is a favourite I didn’t have because Billy Childish and his daughter Tilly Childish sitting next to us would have been inconvenienced). The starters listed are very impressive, but one which always raises a smile but never ordered is the Wicked Crispy Fog. Which turns out to be spicy battered frogs legs.
However this weekend the spelling mistake was corrected by the specials menu, where along with a pretty awesome looking Pork Belly, the frog got a make-over as: WICKED CRAZY FROG.
Who could turn down eating that annoying thing? And it was very very tasty. Usual frogs legs caviats apply, it tastes a bit like a more amphibious set of chicken wings, and the wickedness seems to be akin to the wickedness of the Wicked Zinger Meal at KFC. And the joy of knowing you were eating a number one artist as well!