No, it’s not three-bean saladThe Vietnamese are the master freshmakers: Check your average restaurant and you’ll see soda lemon, your soda egg custard, your salted plum lemonade (sometimes very salted), and your three-bean drink.Three-bean drink is actually a type of che, hot or cold dessert puddings, a sort of snack cum dessert. Che are those weird plastic cups two-thirds filled with coconut milk and orbs the color of children’s toys that you spot in the refrigerator cases of Vietnamese delis. Three-bean drink (or che ba mau, three-color drink) is the kind of che most Vietnamese restaurants serve. Underneath the coconut milk and ice cubes are layers of yellow split mung-beans, red kidney beans, and green mung-bean jelly strips.What’s up with the frozen bean thing? They’re cooked extra soft, so it’s not like your tasting baked bean ice cream; they’re cooked with sugar, so there’s a creamy sweetness to them, as if you’re tasting mostly flavorless mangoes…it’s a textural thing. Mostly you taste the coconut milk.I ordered three-bean drink at a couple of restaurants, and not only were the drinks meh, they only contained two beans, as if they thought I couldn’t count.