Johns Hopkins University President William Brody spent two weeks in Beijing studying Mandarin in 2006. Here he describes the dining experience:

One of our favorites is a Muslim restaurant, where we get dinner for two for $2 or $3, including a chicken kabob, curried eggplant, rice, and beer. The food is quite tasty, though perhaps not as hygienic as at home — I really liked the barbequed chicken or lamb on a bamboo skewer until Wendy observed that they probably reuse the skewers.

When I read this, I guffawed because it reminded me of the sidewalk barbecues in Vietnam. Marv and I are big fans of the ol’ BBQ and I occasionally asked our helper to buy us a sampling to eat at home with rice vermicelli salad. We often saw that the vendors laid their grills directly on the sidewalks along busy streets but the grilled meat was so delicious that we tried not to see if you know what I mean.

Here’s a photo I’ve nicked from Noodlepie where Graham goes into great detail describing “barbecue boulevard.”

vietnam barbecue

Direct proof that barbecue causes cancer.

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