One Burst of Flavor
Following Taste, Finding More
Saigon Sisters | Chicago IL
This is honestly the first week in almost seventy-five since being laid off on November 21, 2024, that not having the answer to what comes next has weighed too heavily on me.
When I’m not writing, I feel restless and agitated. I worry that maybe I’ve ventured too far off the reserve. What once felt like an oasis from complacency and chaos, now feels like an isolated, not necessarily lonely, but isolated still, no-man’s land.
There’s only one direction that I’m certain I’m not meant to go and that’s the direction from which I came.
That doesn’t exactly narrow things down.
This past Thursday, awash with an uncharacteristic self-pity and draining edginess, I ignored Taste’s call to try a local restaurant that has long been on my list: Saigon Sisters in Chicago’s West Loop. I have only had Vietnamese one other time since my trip to Vietnam in 2025, and not from a lack of wanting.
The following day when I woke up again not feeling like myself, I questioned why I would snub the compass that’s led me out into a free and energizing wide-open.
So this time I didn’t overthink it. I accepted the invitation.
After a brisk six-block walk through Chicago’s grey and depressing version of a May 1st spring Friday, I found myself once again in front of a Green Papaya Salad and one of my all-time favorite dishes on this planet – Bun Cha.
While neither were prepared like I had had in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, both delivered on the exact flavor my whole mind, body, gut and soul had seemed to be aching for. This was it. This was my lifeline, a jump-start on a worn-out system that simply needed to re-remember.
I ate and sipped slowly, savoring every last bite. Leaving only a few lettuce shells on my plate, I left feeling replenished like something more than food had fed and filled me.
Did I have any more of a sense of what and where was next? No.
Did I feel less isolated and alone? No.
But did I feel inspired and ready to figure it out? Yes.
And sometimes one burst of flavor is all it takes to get us moving again – away from what we were meant to leave behind and in the direction of what awaits us.
