The Great Southeast Asian Standoff

With the children's food allergies and our own preoccupation with southeast Asian cuisine, there aren't many places where we can eat. Italian is out with all the pasta; "American cuisine," even if it weren't an oxymoron, would be mostly gluten and dairy; fast food is glutenous and grotesque; Chinese food for the American palette tends to be rather bland (not to mention the soy, which Madeleine can't have), and our particular nordic, largely rural state doesn't have much beyond those categories... But there is Thai, and, more recently, Vietnamese. We have generally defaulted to Thai food, but there was a recent discovery of Vietnamese cuisine, and now the two compete whenever we contemplate eating out.

The other day, I made the mistake of mentioning that we would probably go out for Vietnamese food, but then Amy abruptly overruled in favor of Thai (she wanted duck), and Ian wasn't entirely pleased:

"Can we go out for Vietanese? [sic] My mouth gets tired of fish sauce."

(February 13, 2010)