Smoked Salt & Pepper

We celebrated Tet this year in Houston with my family and it was loads of fun and excitement for John.  I made red longevity noodles for the first time and looked with forlorn envy as everyone ate my aunt's bun bo hue, I skipped out on my mom's homemade banh tet,  and even bypassed my birthday cake.  Ok, it was only 1/3 of my birthday cake.  It was the 'February birthdays' birthday cake within my dad's family and I actually brought it so there was no surprise there.  All this sacrifice and withholding is due to my new resolution to try a month-long elimination diet trial. You heard right, I'm attempting Whole30! But Christine, you freaking love grains, alcohol, added sugar, legumes and dairy! Why yes, I do, but for the sake of my continued health, and to see if there is a nutrition-related link with Bell's Palsy (every holistic health person tells me this), I'm going to do some self-experimentation.  Let's see if cutting out sugar, grains, alcoho...

(This is an update of my 2017 Austin Best Eats guide) When I moved to Austin over 10 years ago from Houston, finding Vietnamese restaurants helped me with my homesickness.  When I don't have the time to cook or want to eat out, some of these places have been solid!  I think the Austin Vietnamese scene has really blossomed over the last few years as Vietnamese food has become more mainstream.   Vietnamese food in Austin is plentiful! Sometimes, you just need to know where to look.  Here is just a SAMPLING of a few popular places around town.   The  hours and addresses are listed and website linked when possible.   If I left out your favorite, please  comment below! In an effort to keep this post from being  repetitive  or way too long, I left out places my fellow food blogger over at  The Smoking Ho has included in his Banh Mi roundup .  888 Pan Asian Vietnamese Cuisine * 2400 E. Oltorf Suite 1A, Austin, TX 7...