An elaborate tourist meal

Part of the day in Hue involved this lunch that was highly talked about. It is called the Ty Ao Garden, and it apparently caters specially to foreign tourists. The lunch is paid for in our tour package, but the drinks are not, and our mineral water that was supposed to be included was not given until after the lunch.

The drinks were definitely overpriced, about 2x the normal price, though they had some interesting drink selections including kiwi juice, which apparently is not very good and passion fruit juice, which was warm!

The first course was this rather elaborate peacock! The body is a hollowed out pineapple with a real flame on the inside. The pork spring rolls (these are the deep fried kind) are on toothpicks on the body. The spring rolls were definitely very good and tasty. 

Course 2 is this carrot and potato soup. The soup like most Vietnamese soups is wonderfully flavored and aromatic (suspect it's a meat based soup). The potato gives this some substance. 

Next up is this slightly skimpy grilled shrimp. I must say overall the meal was extremely filling and definitely more in portion than all other meals I have had so far, but the shrimp in this area tends to be on the skinny side. This was fairly flavorful, though most of the flavor is sitting on the shell. 

This is a Hue pancake. The inside of it looks like:

The inside is mostly bean sprouts with a long meat ball and an even skimpier shrimp. The sauce is unclear what it is to me, as the whole dish was kinda bland and greasy...

Now this! This was my favorite part of the meal! This was a type of salad with pork and shrimp, though the pork seemed like it was more of a paste than actual meat. The salad is scooped into the fried shrimp chips, and the whole thing is absolutely delicious! I could not find out the name of the salad unfortunately...

At this point in the meal, I was too full to enjoy this lotus seed steamed rice. It was rice steamed with broth and the veggies are the lotus seed, bamboo shoots and carrots. Very flavorful, though the rice is a bit soggy for my standards. 

And the meal wrapped up with more elaborate schemes. The mandarin oranges tasted more like the ones I have had in China, which is more ripe and sweet, though I like them more zesty. The left side is actually a fake plant, the dessert is the two fruits, which are green bean filling shaped like a fruit. 

Yep, that outside wrapping is a mysteriously spongy and jello like outer shelled, dyed with some crazy colors... This was way sweet without any flavor and the filling had the consistency of cement paste... I had to spit it out and rinse my mouth out with my own bottled water. 

Overall, despite the poor finish, this was a very delicious and fulfilling meal. My only gripe with this was that for a packed day with multiple activities, the lunch took over one hour as they take time to serve each course, and I felt anxious the entire time knowing our guide was waiting for us outside.