Vietnamese? Yes Please

Kim’s Vietnamese Stall
Camden
London
NW1

Star rating: 7








Yes it’s been a while since I’ve written something that has needed ‘Fletching it First’. This month I went a little mad and decided to book not one but two holidays, order a Reading Festival ticket, pay 2 months rent in one go and book a dancing course! I couldn’t be poorer and this means that I haven’t been able to dine out at all. I can’t complain though as the lack of eating out has done wonders for my body - clothes are no longer snug on me and I have to pull jeans up with a belt and dresses in with pins. Another bonus of my dramatic and overboard spending-spree is that I will have a whole range of things to blog about and review…

Well anyway I felt it was about time that I told you about Kim’s Vietnamese Stall. Based just outside Camden’s Indoor Market – this little place has entertained my stomach for the past years during lunch breaks. The quality of the food here is higher than the other greasy, fattening foreign food counters in the market. For £4 you can get a variety of noodle soups, rice noodles or egg - from pork, chicken, salmon, prawns, beef and won tong which are smothered in bean sprouts, soy sauce and a slice of lemon. These soups have got me through many a cold and boosted my immune system. They are almost as effective as my mum and grandma’s traditional Trini soup recipes for flu.

At Kim’s you can also choose between dishes of black bean chicken and rice, sweet and sour and coconut chicken, which you can sit down and eat on the outdoor table and chairs or take it away secured neatly in a tupperware box. Side dishes include chicken or vegetable spring rolls for a pound each or my favourite chicken Satay chicken covered in a creamy peanut sauce. The staff are friendly and if you go regularly enough they will give you a small discount.
Kim’s isn’t a restaurant, it is a Camden stall, so if the seats are taken be prepared to squat on the floor or on walls and staircases dotted around by the canal. It may be delightful for a summer’s day but not so much if it’s bucketing it down.
It doesn’t bother me though, as I can always eat it at my desk, I quite enjoy the remarks I get from colleagues about ‘the wonderful smell.’

But best of all, to add to my hopefully slimmer waist line, the soups and rice dishes ‘taste of health’ and contain very little fat in them. So even though I will be broke for a while until payday, I still get to indulge in something exotic, that does not cost the earth, and will still be able to slip into my bikinis nicely for my holidays. At least that's something less depressing than my shrinking bank balance!