We had breakfast today at the home of our friend Tuan. One of his innumerable sisters runs a restaurant out of the front room, and she is a fantastic cook. She specializes in "broken rice" -- short-grain rice with a variety of heavier dishes with gravy, such as barbecue pork, stewed tuna steaks or hard boiled eggs. We had a sample platter and went away stuffed.
This kind of room facing the street is a combination formal receiving room and garage. (You can see the family altar and a motorbike in the background of the second picture.) It's pretty common to run some kind of small retail operation out of these rooms -- a quickimart or a small dining operation like this. She told us she has 100 customers per day, and basically what you see in the glass case in the background is the whole set up. Other sisters help at a stove in the kitchen in back, and the stock is delivered in small quantities by motorbike. I counted three deliveries while we were there. The breakfast rush is children getting breakfast on the way to school, and the lunch rush is laborers on break and some kids out from school.
I lost track of all the cousins in the household, but I do know the six-month old girl is the child of the brother whose wedding we went to in 2008.
