One of the things I brought home from the Army was a taste for Vietnamese food, which I highly recommend if you like Asian cuisine but are tired of the usual Chinese fare. That's why you might occasionally find me at Saigon, the only restaurant in town I know with an extensive Vietnamese menu. I also recommend that place, if you think you can stand to venture into the scary south side. There's quite an eclectic mix of customers -- office workers from downtown, scruffy looking types, obvious geezer veterans, Hispanics who live nearby, members of the Vietnamese community. If you want to try a few recipes at home, check out this site, which a friend just sent me. If you like soup, start with pho, more or less the national dish.
A lot of the food we enjoy here today comes from our soldiers who went away and developed a taste for something different. Some of us are luckier than others. My poor brother served for a while in Korea, where they bury cabbage in the back yard, then dig it up to eat much, much, much later.
