| I will explain the reasonings, but I hope that you don't have to read on and just believe my intuition that you really ate beef. This is better for your peace of mind I think :-) - Dog meat is served in specific places, it's not something widely available (like you noticed in your reply). The place that serves it will usually have "Dog meat" in the name of the restaurant (in Vietnamese: "Thit cho") - You mentioned sitting outside on "kindergarten-sized chair". This is what Vietnamese people call "quán vỉa hè" and not many of those places serve dog meat. - You mentioned "a filet of ..." "a piece of meat" "a bit charred" and "red". Out of those 4 bits of information, only "a bit charred" makes sense for dog meat. But dog meat is always cooked into some special dishes, and never "filet" with just "one piece". - If the menu was all in Vietnamese and only one item had English, saying "American Beefsteak" and being priced higher, then it would be a special cut of Beef aimed towards foreigners. - "Gamey" "A bit stringy" "Tough" is exactly the words describing texture of Vietnamese beef, some specialty beef places will have this type of beef cut (remember, you're in a country where for most people the best way to eat beef is to have it diced thin stir-fried, cooked well done. people don't usually eat steaks.) Keep in mind that: - This varies a lot depending on the parts of the country where you visited. Since you did not specify where you ate this, I'm assuming Urban/City outskirts area, belonging to a Southern city/province or Northern city/province and am basing my intuition on this. If this happened in a very rural area or mountainous area, then my comments on dog meat being served in special places does not apply, but the comments about the meat you described still apply. Some links to see: - Some exotic cuts of beef in Vietnam: https://vinpearl.com/vi/bo-to-tay-ninh-va-12-dia-chi-thuong-... ( archive.today link: http://archive.today/Hr9DY ) - Dog meat page on Vietnamese Wikipedia (graphic images, beware): https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%E1%BB%8Bt_ch%C3%B3 (some images from S.Korea and China mixed in, Vietnamese prepare their dogs differently) |