Eden Center

During T's stay with me, her cousin's husband picked us up to go to their house one day for a visit. On the way to their house, he stopped at Eden Center in Arlington, Virginia, to show us where all the Vietnamese shops are. It was like a mini version of Little Saigon or the Lion Center in San Jose. I had gone here by myself once before, but it was a long trek from the metro station. So it was a nice stop for me to load up on my Vietnamese food necessities for the semester.
It was a bit funny how they named the lanes in the parking lot with Vietnamese street names.
The main Vietnamese grocery store had a plant section that T was having a heyday taking pictures of. I believe this is a flowering peach tree.
I didn't know what this fruit is, but T says it's a citron. Yeah, still not sure what a citron is used for. It looks more like a shriveled up pomelo to me.

Here's a cute little kumquat tree.
We also had a sort of linner meal at one of the restaurants inside the Eden Center. I don't recall what the name of the restaurant was, but it was so good to have Vietnamese ice coffee and have Vietnamese noodles again. SOOOOOO YUMMY IN MY TUMMY!!!!
Above are the usual condiments that come with an order of any kind of Vietnamese soup. Below is Seafood Egg Noodle Soup with a fried shrimp appetizer thingy.
After linner, we went to a couple of shops to look at things and of course to buy more things. This was a little sandwich shop that also had all sorts of Vietnamese cha lua (Vietnamese ham), bread, and rice cakes galore.
I didn't buy any of these things, but they're so cute! I did buy myself a banh chung and devoured the entire thing for lunch today (I am so a pig).

And then there was this very popular little shop, apparently well known for its fried tofu. Seriously, the line was almost out the door. And people were buying boxes upon boxes of fried tofu (like ten boxes at a time!). We didn't try any, but T's cousin's hubby did buy a box to bring home to his wife.
If the Eden Center wasn't so far away from the nearest metro station (it took me 20 minutes to walk there from East Falls Church station), I think I would make a weekly trip to this place just to chow down on Vietnamese food. For instance, I'm still trying to find a good Vietnamese sandwich place since my favorite store in Boston went out of business. Oh well, perhaps I'll just have to make it a zipcar trip.

Photos courtesy of T.