A recent lunch with a caravan of hungry friends reminded me of the insurmountable difference between eating in America and eating in Vietnam. Even when the food is excellent, even with folks I love, even when the weather is as freaky hot as it's been this week.

Expansive menus, with dishes numbering into the three digits, and the a la carte approach to dining in the West culminated again in an experience that's difficult for me to reconcile with Vietnamese food: every single person at the table was eating something completely different.

My bowl of noodles was wedged between a dish of curry on the left and grilled beef with rice paper on the right. Across from me were fried frog legs, and at the end of the table was a pile of pork chops. When such radically different dishes are slung onto a table, the spirit of the food itself is lost.

Restaurants in Vietnam tend to specialize in one, two, maybe three variations on a single dish. Everyone in the restaurant, let alone everyone at the table, is slurping soup or wrapping shrimp together. If different courses are served, they come family style, and everyone shares from the middle of the table.

As for true family style, when the Tran clan gathers, we'll clear out the living room furniture, sit in a huge circle on the floor, and place multiple platters of the same dish to share in the middle. There's no such thing as a buffet for the cousins to pick and choose.

Then again...where would we be without American individuality? The freedom to choose, the freedom to express our inner desires, the freedom to break out of the circle, the freedom to be alone.

Clockwise around the table:

Banh hoi, delicate squares of rice noodles, define an entire class of dishes. Here, grilled beef rolls are the savory star.

Duck soup with dried bamboo shoots is a hard-to-find treat.

Shredded duck meat tossed with cabbage falls into the goi category, special salads that start formal meals or accompany congee soup.

Vietnamese "gatorade" made from salted plums and lime juice. An acquired taste for some but most definitely good for your body on the hottest days.

Chicken curry reveals the country's old ties with India and Thailand.

Hearty and spicy, bun bo hue highlights thick, round rice noodles, slices of pork, and chewy nuggets of pig's feet.

Plates of fresh herbs...

...and fresh vegetables define a southern Vietnamese table.

A generous platter of sweetly charred pork chops will feed someone for a week.

Not quite the river prawns promised, but still rich with shrimp brains.

Fried frog legs, one of the restaurant's specialties, are the upscale version of buffalo wings. Lime and black pepper add zest.

The soft, fresh tofu is fried to order.

Spring rolls the New-World way...

...and the Old-World way.

The line out front hints at the lunchtime wait at this very popular restaurant, an excellent place to compose a medley of Vietnamese dishes.

Vung Tau II Restaurant
1750 N Milpitas Blvd.
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 934-9327

Nothing evokes special occasions like a lobster with drawn butter, but there was once a time when they were considered poverty fare. Fed to orphans, prisoners and indentured servants, lobsters from the Northern Atlantic did not appeal to early colonists.

It took the canning craze of the 1950s to spread the taste of lobster beyond New England, and since then, the red, beady-eyed crustaceans appear on casino buffets and surf-and-turf menus in every state. There's debate now about whether the lobster industry is the best it's ever been or on the verge of collapse, but Maine lobstermen are working closely with marine biologists to develop sustainable practices. It's the older, more labor-intensive, back-breaking ways of early lobstering that will save the industry.

Working on a lobster boat for one hour -- let alone one day -- will silence anyone who complains about the price of lobster.

Lobster Lingo

For those who weren't raised along the coast of Maine, here's a quick primer on lobsters:

Berries - Lobster eggs. Conscientious, law-abiding lobstermen will gently return a berried female back to the water after V-notching her tail, indicating to others that she's a valuable resource. Her 10,000 or so eggs, carried on the outside of her shell, will be released after 9 or 10 months, and of these, about 10 of them will survive. That's 1/10 of 1 percent who even have a whiff of a chance of reaching maturity.

Bugs - Newly hatched lobster larvae. More generally, an affectionate term for all lobsters, as in "Come ovah for dinner tonight for some boiled bugs."

Chicken - A one-pound lobster. It can take as long as 7 years in the cold waters of the northern Atlantic to grow to this size.

Hen - A female lobster.

Cock - A male lobster.

Snappers - Young lobsters, for their tendency to flick their tails frequently

Pistol - A lobster without claws. During molting or fighting, they may lose one or both, but will regenerate them with time.

Pot - A lobster trap, especially in great Britain. Though now more commonly made of easy-to-maintain plastic rather than wood, it still attracts lobsters through a one-way entrance. Famously inefficient, they often allow lobsters to walk away after eating. With a stoic shrug of their shoulders, lobstermen accept this as a facet of Maine's de facto aquaculture, allowing younger ones to feed, escape and breed. In the photo (from Casco Bay) you can see the low-tech bricks that weigh the traps down in the water.

Kitchen - The first chamber of a lobster trap, where the bug goes to eat.

Parlor - The inner chamber of a lobster trap. Also known as the bedroom, this is where the bug awaits the lobsterman.

Lobster cars - Crates that are kept buoyed and locked just off-shore to store trapped lobsters until they go to market.

Ghost fishing When lost nets, loose traps or fragments of other broken equipment continue to catch and kill marine life. Modern traps have escape vents constructed from biodegradable materials to allow lobsters to escape from lost traps.

Keepers Lobsters that measure between 3.25 and 5 inches from their eye sockets to the tip of their tails, the legal limits for market.

Shorts - Lobsters that fall below the legal size.

Shedder - A newly molted lobster. It has absorbed sea water into its body, and there's extra space in its soft shell. If you've ever received a gush of water when cracking open a lobster, you probably have a shedder on your plate.

Crusher - The larger, stronger claw with courser teeth. If the lobster's right claw is the crusher, it's called a "right-handed" lobster.

Ripper - The smaller claw, which has finer teeth for cutting and tearing.

"From away" - People like me who are not from Maine. Summer tourists. Well-meaning travelers and diners who triple town populations and clog up Highway 1 in search of lobster.

Where to eat lobster in the Bay Area

In November of 1920, The Manufacturer and the Builder--"A monthly journal devoted to the Advancement and Diffusement of Practical Knowledge"--reported that California received its first shipment of live lobsters from the East Coast. Layered in a crate with moist rock weed and then packed inside another, ice-lined crate, a little over half of the 600 lobsters survived the voyage.

While overnight planes have sped up the trip considerably in this century, finding a good lobster isn't as easy as you'd think. For the most part, New Englanders stranded in Northern California simply waited between visits back east to enjoy fresh, plain crustaceans, free of wasabi-panko crust or truffle oil or even chipotle butter.

For those who'd like a taste without boarding a plane, there's at least one place you can nurse your bug cravings. It's not quite the same as your favorite shack in Harpswell or Thomaston, but Old Port Lobster Shack in Redwood City boasts the closest thing to Down East eating in these parts. They have sister restaurants in North Beach and Napa, but it's the South Bay kitchen that serves up the better bugs.

A bell near the register let's the kitchen know when to throw a lobster into the pot. Behind it you can see some of the draft beers from both the east and west coasts you can try: Sea Dog, Allagash, Old Thumper, Anchor Steam, Dead Guy, and Widmer Brothers.

While the sides are not particularly noteworthy (even the dried blueberries in the cole slaw weren't really that great) the OPLS serves lobsters whole and uncracked in all their glory. You could order the lazy version, but why?

The true find are the lobster rolls, which come with the right bread (baked specially soft for the restaurant) and are packed full of handpicked meat. The "naked" version is the purist's choice; a tiny bit of melted butter and mayo arrive on the side.

Old Port Lobster Shack

Redwood City
851 Veterans Blvd
Redwood City, CA 94061
(650) 366-2400

Napa Valley
806 Fourth Street

Napa, CA 94559
(707) 258.8200

North Beach
532 Green St
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 829-3634

Lest readers things that I only like to eat meat (and by meat, I mean, of course, pork) I'm dedicating today's post to one of my favorite cusines: South Indian.

After a recent crash course in using a Sumeet mixer-grinder, Ramach and Vidya introduced me to one of their standby eateries. I had planned to make my way back up 880 to Fremont for some good Indian eats, but Vidya assured me that a detour to Sunnyvale would be worth my time. Never to turn down a personal introduction to food, I postponed a few more rounds of pani puri for a plate of endless rice.

As with many Indian restaurants, our destination was ensconced in a strip mall alongside a Korean market, Chinese noodle shop, and Hindi video store. Komala Vilas is nothing fancy. Like its website, it offers only the essentials. There's not an extensive menu that includes every region of the subcontinent, nor are there evocative artifacts on the walls. If your skin is pale, you might be the only one of your kind in the dining room. Expect families on the weekends and high-tech workers during the weekday lunch rush.

But for experiencing a delicious meal as its enjoyed toward the tip of India, you can't find much better.

A banana leaf meal. (Photo by Peter Tan.)

A formal South Indian meal is divided into three courses of rice. Before stainless steel became widespread, banana leaves were the plate of choice, and if you travel in India, you'll still see this very convenient, very natural form of disposable dinnerware. With purity of service being so important, these one-use plates, bowls and cups were standard. It also helps that the plants are incredibly abundant in the south. Kerala is named, quite literally, after the banana trees that cover this state. Nowadays, stainless steel is widespread, especially in less banana-friendly climes like the U.S.

If you visit Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, or Thailand, you'll find "banana leaf" restaurants and street stalls that serve a wide variety of food. There's something about eating off a fresh, green leaf that makes the simplest sauce even more flavorful.

Although it seems casual, there are specific dictates in India to serving food on a banana leaf, especially for celebratory feasts or religious offerings. From alternating dry vegetables with gravies to the exact corner for placing a sweet palate teaser, the order of up to 20 different foods follows a circular pattern that incorporates health, religion and regional traditions. Udupi diners, in particular, take particular care in the placement of their food.

At Komala Vilas, you won't need to worry about this. You won't even receive a menu, for that matter, but have no fear, for eating at restaurants like this is as simple as nodding your head. (You can even practice the Indian nod, that gentle sideways bobbing that marks a native of the subcontinent.) You'll be given a large, metal plate, then immediately, servers will appear with large buckets of food. All you need to do is say yes to rice and its many accompaninents.

One of the courses making its way around the dining room.

As with dim sum and hotel brunch buffets, it's all about the pacing. Even if you're very hungry, you might want to pass on seconds of the first course. The food is so good and the servers so attentive that it's very easy to accept more every time they come by. Spicy pickles and eating with your fingers slows you down a little, but not as much as you'd think.

Finally, a note must be included about forkless food. As one of my hosts in Kerala told me, she couldn't imagine eating with implements, as they would separate her from an entire sensory facet of food. The texture and temperature of vegetables in her hands were as important to her as our emphasis on visual aesthetics. At Komala Vilas, you'll learn to get in touch with your food. Just as you would use chopsticks at a Chinese banquet, do follow your fellow diners at a South Indian restaurant. Remember that the right hand is for food, though an occasional nudge with your left fingers is unavoidable for most beginners.

Cup your four fingers together like a spoon, and then use your thumb to slip each bite into your mouth. High society looks favorably on those who only wet their fingertips up to the first knuckle, but everyday eaters don't mind a handful of flavor.

Now, for the rice courses...

DAL SAMBAR
Sambar is the everyday food of South India. If you've tasted any of the common chaat, such as idli or vada, then you most probably received some sambar alongside or over it. Made from a handful of lentils or mung bean simmered in a pot of water until they disintegrate into a smooth, creamy mixture, dal has infinite potential. The most common flavorings include golden turmeric, sour tamarind, earthy asafoetida, fragrant curry leaves, and popped mustard seeds.

A ladleful of the sambar will appear at the top, left of your plate. To the right goes the vegetable of the day, such as drumstick, cabbage, potato, or caulifower. Once the rice comes, you can mix in as much of the sambar as you want.

Large rounds of crisp pappadam will be offered, too. You can crush them into little bits to sprinkle over your rice, or you can just break off pieces occasionally to dip into the sambar. Or you can just eat them all before your rice even arrives. Your choice.

The killer bucket that comes by regularly is the one filled with ghee. It's an endless spring of buttery goodness, and for those who are ignoring their arteries, this golden richness makes everything taste better.

Sambar, cabbage and pappadam waiting for a generous heap of rice.

RASAM RICE
The second course is analogous to a soup course. Rasam refers to the tangy, thin broth that gets poured over your rice. A small amount of one or two vegetables adds some texture, while a generous finishing of fresh herbs and oil-sputtered spices adds complex layers of flavors. Again, mix it all up and then sweep the rice up to your lips. If you like your rice very wet, feel free to use the side of your hand to scoop and eat.

By this time, you will also have been offered pickles. Maybe green mango, maybe zesty lime, or maybe a please-them-all mixed variety. I love pickles and have to curb my affinity for all things sour, or else the entire meal begins to taste like one spicy heap of pickle.

RICE & CURDS
The third and last savory course is a cooling mixture of rice and buttermilk or yogurt. Again, you can ask for ghee to enrich the rice. One of the most delicious versions I've had included some fresh lemon juice and more ghee than you want to know. Rice and curds is Indian comfort food at its best. I'd go in just for this course alone.

FILTER COFFEE

A tumbler of filter coffee, nestled in a deep, flared davarah, comes to the table frothy hot.

Since I have Vietnamese blood in my viens, sipping Indian filter coffee comes as naturally to me as slurping pho. The metal filter, the 20-minute drip time, the bite of chicory mellowed with caramel sweetness -- it's culinary deja vu.

You can order chai, but since we're enjoying the flavors of South India, a tumbler of strong coffee is a must. Coffee became popular relatively recent in the subcontinent, but as the bean's cultivation spread under the Raj across the foothills of the Western Ghats, it soon became a drink of choice in the surrounding states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Andra Pradesh. It's the Peaberry that gives Madras filter coffee its distinctive flavor, but other dark roast varieties can also be used.

Someone in the kitchen will pour the coffee back and forth between two containers to raise a lively forth of bubbles. The coffee should arrive so hot that you can't touch the tumbler. Pour a little into the deep saucer and swirl it around to cool. Most like to sweeten their coffee a bit...or a lot. White sugar is the modern stand-in for jaggery, but if you ask nicely, you might be able to convince the server to bring you some deeply flavored palm sugar. Moist flakes of jaggery is to filter coffee what a drippy spoonful of sweetened, condensed milk is to Vietnamese coffee.

It's powerful stuff. There's rarely need for a second cup, but then again, when has need ever stopped us from enjoyment?

DESSERT
In the spirit of all-you-can-eat, I had triple servings of their lovely payasam. This soothing dessert -- made from milk that's been boiled, gently sweetened with sugar, thickened with tiny strands of vermicelli, flavored with cardamom, and sprinkled with almonds -- is one of my favorites. You might think that you don't have room, but it's only a few spoonfuls (times three), just enough to finish a thoroughly satisfying meal.

KOMALA VILAS
1020 East El Camino Real, Sunnyvale
(408) 733-7400

Yesterday, I attended the best cookbook event ever. Book signings are now more a professional obligation than a fun diversion, but I'm very glad I stopped in at the Bayanihan Community Center to see Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan. This wasn't your usual book event. Grandparents brought their grandkids, and Tagalog was spoken unabashedly. The tastings were generous--I enjoyed thirds on those adobo ribs--and there was much laughter in the air. Their discussion and demonstration were a powerful reminder of the way sharing recipes, memories, and food keep a community together over time and distance.

Amy and Romy's book, Memories of Philippine Kitchens, has been years in the making, and once you open the covers, you undertand immediately the amount of time and effort that went into gathering the stories. It's a rare example of a cookbook that encompasses geography, politics, culture, oral history, and excellent recipes in a book that is as beautiful as it is generous and loving. Publishers Stewart, Tabori & Chang did an excellent job with it; they allowed Amy to include the region's complex history, a multitude of photos, and a voice centered in her own community's experience rather than bent toward explaining her cuisine to non-Filipinos.

The book has sold out in nearly every store around the world, from Manila to London to San Francisco. Managers tell of readers standing in their store aisles, crying over the book. Its deep resonance with the Filipino diaspora speaks of the need for this book. Long overdue, Memories of Philippine Kitchens is the harbinger of a wider appreciation of a much misunderstood cuisine.

The husband and wife team opened their restaurant, Cendrillon, in Manhattan in 1995. Amy had fled Manila just weeks before martial law was declared in 1972, and in their youth, they were activists in the international Phillipines political movement. Romy's passion for food, however, led him to work in restaurants. It wasn't long before they decided to open their own restaurant highlighting Southeast Asian cuisines and then, of course, to begin writing this book.

If you're not familiar with Filipino food, then you're in for a treat. The fresh seafood; the fruity sour flavors that assert themselves again and again; and the amazing variety of noodles, soups and desserts--Filipino cuisine is one of the most fun to explore. Generosity at the table is a hallmark, and the laughing, singing and joking that accompany any gathering adds their own unique flavor to the food. Three dishes that any serious food lover must experience: a piquant peppery adobo, a kinilaw made with the day's catch, and a communal pot of sinigang.

Kilawing Tangigue: Generous amounts of ginger and scallion spike this fresh-from-the-sea kinilaw, one of the native dishes of the Philippines. (Photo by Bing Ramos)

The islands--over 7,000 of them--are home to centuries of intertwined communities. Native hunters, Chinese and Arab merchants, Malay empires with Muslim rulers, Indian laborers, and Spanish colonists followed by American soldiers have all left their mark on the country's culture. Revealing history in the kitchen, the cuisine itself reflects this pastiche of influences.

Northern and Southern California are home to the largest concentrations of Filipinos outside of Manila. From the first sailors who landed in Alta California to the Central Valley's agricultural workers, including Philip Vera Cruz, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, their history is integral to the successes of this state.

To learn more about the history, culture and cuisine of the Filipino community, visit:

Arkipelago Books
1010 Mission Street, San Francisco
(415) 553-8185
One of the city's gem of an indpendent bookstore, this packed space stocks any book ever written about the Philippines or Filipino Americans. I visit regularly to check in on their wonderful cooking and food section, which has hard-to-find books such as Beyond Rice, a stunningly beautiful book on the traditional cultivation of this important crop, and Kinilaw: A Philippine Cuisine of Freshness, an essential cookbook for any seafood lover. Another great find is the CD collection of Bay Area classical guitarist, Florante Aguilar, playing harana, traditional Filipino courtship serenades.

Bistro Luneta
615 Third Avenue, San Mateo
(650) 344-0041
A modern setting for Filipino cuisine, Bistro Luneta blends traditional flavors with contemporary techniques. While other Southeast Asian cuisines also appear on the menu, this is the place in the Bay Area to taste Filipino cuisine at its most vibrant.

Patio Filipino
1770 El Camino Real, San Bruno
(650) 872-9888 or (415) 810-9882
The menu at this restaurant highlights the Spanish influence on the country's cuisine. The house specialty is Paella Valenciana, but there's also an impressive list of sinigang soups and dishes with favorite ingredients, including kangkong leaves, milkfish, duck eggs, and pork in all its many yummy incarnations. They have a catering service, definitely worth trying for your next feasting event.

The Filipino American Arts Exposition
Dedicated to preserving and presenting Filipino arts and culture, the FAAE hosts the annual pistahan celebration at Yerba Buena.