Cà Pháo

I won't even pretend that I know the English name of most of the food that goes on my plate when I am on the road in Vietnam. Most of the foods I see regularly, I know the Vietnamese name, and I know what it tastes like before I put it in my mouth. But anyone who has translated for an American in a Vietnamese food setting knows that saying what something is in the native language usually doesn't fly. Even if it does fly, you know the person asking the question thinks you aren't as good as you say you are. Forget about the fact that most of these foods can't even be found anywhere other than an Asian specialty store in the U.S. And even if you were to say the English name, they wouldn't recognize it.

A common food on the Vietnamese table that I have yet to see someone translate correctly is the cà pháo.  The classifier "cà" is a good clue.  Cà is the root word for Tomato and Egg Plant, so you figure it is in the same family. One of the more creative team linguists I know refers to them as firecracker tomatoes; phao translated directly as firecracker.  Wrong.

For the record, Ca Phao is commonly referred to as Garden Egg or Thai Eggplant.  I had never heard this particular fruit / vegetable made reference to in the English language before, so I guess it really doesn't matter, but I will definitely keep it in my back pocket the next time it is on the table and someone asks. I will even be able to reply, "Really!" when they give me that puzzled look.