Th?t Chó
Unlucky has been lost from his owner for a week. He has an ordinary looking: four legs, two ears, and two dark black eyes. White fur covers all of his body. However, Hanoi’s busy streets with its thousands of scooters rushing around has made his hair all messy, and turned it into a greyish color.
Tonight, Unlucky is caught by a man. The man’s rough hands put Unlucky inside an iron kennel. A rubber rope is used to keep the kennel on a scooter seat. All night, the man rides around the young city looking for lost pets – like Unlucky. It is what he does for a living.
Morning arrives slowly. The man stops at a roadside restaurant. He trades all the pets that he finds that night with the chef. He receives a bit of cash, which will be enough to feed his family for few days. Exhausted from his night of work, he goes home quickly.
The roadside restaurant gets busy during the lunch break. Men and women talk and laugh loudly. They don’t care if anyone is listening to their conversations. There is no privacy at a roadside restaurant because people sit so close to each other. Everyone sits on small plastic chairs, around tiny plastic tables. All they want is to erase the work of the morning.
Lunch starts with boiled peanuts. It’s a common snack at roadside restaurants, served with beer, cheap beer; always lots of beer. After the snack, main dishes are bought to the table. Unfortunately, it is the meat of Unlucky.
The meat with skin is boiled until tender then sliced thin. It is then served with lemongrass, Thai basil, lime and dipped with fresh chili shrimp sauce. People enjoy the crunchiness of the skin and the tenderness of the meat.
The workers eat and talk for around an hour before they go back to work. No one is drunk and no one feels guilty about eating Unlucky’s meat.
It is an unlucky fact that through many generations, eating dog meat -Th?t Chó - is just like eating pork, beef, or chicken in Vietnam.
And, unlucky means not lucky. It doesn't make this fact wrong or right.
