Calendar Live - Little Saigon Has Its Fill of Great Delights

Thursday, May 10, 2001

AUTHENTIC ETHNIC
Little Saigon Has Its Fill of Great Delights
It's the cultural capital for 400,000 Vietnamese--and the home of many interesting and innovative restaurants.

By LINDA BURUM, Special to The Times

     Bolsa Avenue is an eight-lane river of traffic coursing through the entrepreneurial heart of Orange County's Little Saigon. Twenty-six years ago the fall of Saigon drove thousands of Vietnamese to flee here with little more than memories; even 20 years ago, when I first encountered Little Saigon, it was only a small, hesitant patch of businesses in Westminster and Garden Grove.
     Today, it's the cultural and commercial capital of Southern California's 400,000-strong Vietnamese community--the largest outside Vietnam itself--and it covers 4 1/2 square miles, spilling over into Santa Ana and Fountain Valley. In Southland fashion, its businesses are concentrated in malls, such as the majestic Asian Gardens, looking like the entry to the Forbidden City. Right across Bolsa Avenue is Asian Village, a two-story complex including a gargantuan supermarket surrounded by frescoes of Vietnamese life.
     In the early days, most Little Saigon restaurants offered simple popular dishes, but competition has bred new places featuring regional dishes or specialized cooking techniques. Most interesting of all is a new generation of restaurants that updates traditional dishes using carefully selected produce and stylized presentations. I'd like to thank my friend and food guru Helen Tran, a retired restaurateur who tries about every new place in Little Saigon, for alerting me to so many of these places.
     One of the best is the new Ngoc Suong, which offers a few Western dishes and desserts, among them Cabernet pear tart and creme bru^lee: hence its self-designation, Euro and Vietnamese cuisine.
     It's particularly notable for its salads, such as sliced banana flower and tiny clams in an herb-filled dish sparkling with tart, sweet and pungent notes, crowned with a lipstick pepper decoratively carved, as you might see it in a Thai or Pacific Rim restaurant. The familiar shredded green papaya salad gets a luxurious update with perfectly resilient steamed green beans, large shrimp and intensely meaty shreds of pork instead of dried beef or pounded river crabs.
     Quan Hu-Y, an even more progressive kitchen, cooks a Southern California version of the cuisine of Hue, the capital of Vietnam's emperors, which emphasizes sophisticated cooking techniques and artful presentations. A case in point: meticulously made appetizers such as banh beo, silver-dollar-sized rice pancakes. They're usually thick, chewy and garnished with dried shrimp, but here they're light and translucent with a fresh shrimp filling. Another delicacy, banh it ram, is eight sticky rice dumplings stuffed with slivered shiitake mushrooms, minced shrimp and pork. Each sits on a crisp, puffy rice disk looking like a carefully fashioned snowman.
     There's more to Hue than court cooking, though; its cold winters may have inspired the famous chile-laced soup bun bo Hue. At Quan Hu-Y, there are pork slices and beautiful triangles of shrimp pa^te in the crimson broth instead of the usual ungainly pork hock. (For more traditional Hue-style food, try Thanh Noi in the Fortune Mall on Westminster.)
     My litmus test for quality in a Vietnamese restaurant is the platter of fresh herbs and vegetables present at every meal. The Vietnamese use these for seasoning the way people in other cultures use pickles or salt and pepper. The herbs give each bite a fresh, explosive complexity. Dipping sauces or lime wedges also come with most dishes, so the final flavor of each mouthful is composed by the diner.
     At Ha Noi, a northern-style restaurant famous for duck and dried bamboo shoot soup, Tran and I were served an exemplary herb tray--not only the usual lettuce, mint, cilantro and basil but also rau ram (a cilantro-like herb), ngo om (rice paddy herb), ngo gai (saw-tooth coriander), absolutely fresh morning glory leaves and rau tia to (amaranth leaves).
     Ha Noi has recently moved from its hole-in-the-wall quarters to a pleasantly stylish room. One specialty is barbecued fish on a sizzling platter (No. 1), which arrives on its iron tray in a billow of smoke, still cooking (yet not overcooked), on a bed of caramelized onions and almost hidden under a thatch of fresh dill. With it come roasted peanuts, sliced onions and chiles, rice vermicelli and big puffy rice crackers.
     Another is bun cha Ha Noi (No. 3), a street-food favorite hawked from makeshift sidewalk barbecues in Vietnam. It's sliced pork and two walnut-sized pork burgers, completely permeated with the flavor of charcoal grilling and doused with a vaguely sweet, garlicky marinade.
     There are several ways to eat both these items (and many other Vietnamese dishes): wrapped in lettuce leaves, taco-style, along with your choice of herbs, scooped onto rice crackers, or mixed with noodles and eaten as a salad. The kaleidoscopic sensations of sharp herbs with meat, sauce and noodles are dazzling jazz for the mouth.
     Mam tom, a rather fishy dipping sauce, comes with the fish. Tran squeezes lots of lemon into it. If it doesn't appeal to you, ask for the milder nuoc cham.

     Vien Dong is another old favorite that has relocated to shiny new digs. It concentrates on Northern dishes such as goi mit, green jackfruit salad. Jackfruit has texture like heart of palm, making it a great foil for this salad's masses of chopped herbs, meaty shrimp and crunchy sesame seeds. Be sure to try banh tom, a golden heap of matchstick-cut sweet potatoes fried in tempura-style bundles with shrimp. Eat it with herbs and a warming bowl of bun rieu, a shrimp and crab broth flecked with tomatoes and chewy rice noodles.
     You could easily miss Brodard; it's hidden behind a large 99 Only store in Fortune Mall (enter from the rear parking lot). It provides a heartening display of multi-generational Vietnamese America. A large, ornate, incense-billowing lucky shrine, complete with food offerings, greets customers at the door. Behind this, hip, spiky-coiffed young waiters staff the order desk and twentysomethings work the open kitchen beyond it to serve customers of every age.
     The spectacular roast duck salad, goi vit quay, is a fragrant amalgam of shredded banana flower, cabbage and crisp fried shallots perfumed with amaranth leaves.
     On almost every table you'll see an order of chao tom cuon, fresh spring rolls of grilled shrimp pa^te (there's also a version filled with roast pork meatballs). The draw is the house satay-style peanut dipping sauce, which is enriched with crumbles of lean ground pork. Banh xeo, described on the menu as "fried pizza," looks like an omelet; it's a coconut-scented rice pancake, colored yellow with turmeric, which gets folded over sauteed shrimp and bean sprouts subtly scented with garlic.
     Two fine places for bo 7 mon, the all-beef dinner served in seven courses (most "courses" are appetizer-sized so the meal isn't gargantuan), are Pagolac and Anh Hong. But there's a new take on this idea: the eight-course fish dinner at the recently opened Nhu-Y.
     The first course, a ceviche-like marinated fish salad, is eaten by scooping up the herb-laden morsels with puffy rice crackers. Next come five tapas-like courses designed to be wrapped in rice paper or lettuce with herbs. The best were the fish spring roll, dipped in a turbocharged tamarind sauce, and the small fish patties. Then comes a substantial grilled fish filet accompanied by Vietnamese dips and garnishes. A bowl of fish-rice soup rounds out a meal that's fun to eat at $12.99.
     Pho Tau Bay LTT is on the eastern outskirts of Little Saigon, where Bolsa becomes East Main Street in Santa Ana. The only decor is photos of the family soup stall back in Saigon, but the place attracts throngs of devotees for its banh cuon, freshly steamed rice wrappers so light they look like sheer lingerie fabric. The house special banh cuon (No. 4) is filled with gently seasoned ground pork and crunchy slivers of black tree ear mushrooms, topped with a banquet of garnishes: ground shrimp, mortadella-like cold cuts, crunchy deep-fried shallots and the fresh herbs. The whole combination, done with typical Vietnamese restraint, melts in the mouth.
     There are scores and scores of soup parlors serving pho, the Northern meal-in-a-bowl of beef and rice noodle soup with a wide range of meat garnishes. Pho Tau Bay makes a pho with an extraordinary clear beef flavor. It omits the usual star anise flavoring, which tends to obscure the beef flavor in some versions of pho. The restaurant is also known for chicken pho (pho ga) loaded with lightly poached white meat.

     For sweets, there's Banh Mi Che Cali, where a woman at the bakery counter squirts pastry cream into freshly baked puffs as you watch. This is a favorite party item, sold by the van-load to lined-up customers. Every now and then a baker brings a huge tray of fresh puffs from the ovens in back; the aroma drives everyone wild. The bakery's name refers to its two specialties: banh mi, the Vietnamese hoagie-style sandwiches on warm, crisp French rolls, and che, pudding-like desserts involving sticky rice, tapioca or mung beans stewed in light syrup topped with creamy coconut milk. To my taste, the best che is the one with plantains and tapioca with sweet coconut milk.
     As for the banh mi, a corps of women is making them nonstop behind the bakery cases. Generously filled and nicely garnished with marinated vegetables and cilantro (and sometimes jalapeno slices), they are three for $3. Try the house special, dac biet, loaded with cold cuts, or the roast chicken banh mi.
     The best banh mi of all come from the tiny Gala Bakery on Brookhurst. The owners, who have lived in France, make their own baguettes, mayonnaise, French-Vietnamese pa^te and cold cuts. These elegant sandwiches cost slightly more than most but are worth every penny.
     Many Vietnamese are Buddhists, and several Little Saigon restaurants cater to vegetarians. Au Lac's dining room is like a magic garden, with its hanging wisteria and shoji screen vistas. A takeout deli in front sells vegetarian stuffed steamed dumplings (bao). There are also vegetarian banh mi sandwiches filled with a herbaceous, vaguely meaty vegetable pa^te. But there's much more on Au Lac's long and interesting menu, such as rice-paper-wrapped jicama rolls (like a salad served as a wrap), the vegetable-stuffed wontons in steamy broth and the chile-spiced fried tofu with lemon grass.
     At Vien Huong, the dining room is dominated by a deli case holding several dozen kinds of vegetarian cold cuts and vegetable-based faux meats and seafood. What the chef does with these and with fresh vegetables for her 100-item menu is remarkable: eggplant stuffed with minced "meat," deep-fried in a halo of golden crumbs; tasty "meatballs" in yellow noodle soup; soft, yielding bean curd squares with meaty centers.
     Little Saigon has so much to choose from, the task of selecting a representative cross-section is daunting. But night crawlers should know about Thanh My, an old favorite open every night until 1:30 a.m. Its very long menu has something for everyone; I've even had excellently marinated grill-it-yourself wild boar. Hong Lien, another old favorite, cooks goat more ways than nearly any other place I've seen and does so very well. And Hien Khanh, in business since the mid-'80s, still has the best gooey Vietnamese-style desserts.

More Authentic Ethnic

     Little Saigon Dining
     1. Anh Hong, 10195 Westminster Ave., Garden Grove, (714) 537-5230. Open Mon.-Thu., 4-9:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
     2. Au Lac, 16563 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley, (714) 418-0658. Open Tue.-Sun., 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m.
     3. Banh Mi Che Cali, 8948 Bolsa Ave. (ABC Market Mall), Westminster, (714) 897-3927. Open 7 a.m.-9 p.m. daily.
     4. Brodard, 9892 Westminster Ave., #R (behind 99 Only store), Garden Grove, (714) 530-1744 Open Wed.-Sat. and Mon., 8 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., 8 a.m.-7 p.m.
     5. Gala Bakery, 14570 Brookhurst Ave., Westminster, (714) 775-7327. Open Tue.-Sun., 6:30 a.m.-7 p.m.
     6. Ha Noi, 9082-9086 Bolsa Ave., Westminster, (714) 901-8108. Open Thu.-Tue., 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
     7. Hien Khanh, 9784 Westminster Ave., Garden Grove, (714) 537-5105. Open Thu.-Tue., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.
     8. Hong Lien, 8461 Westminster Ave., Westminster, (714) 892-6368. Open Wed.-Mon., 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 10 a.m.-11 p.m.
     9. Ngoc Suong, 10112 Westminster Ave., Garden Grove, (714) 539-8811. Open Wed.-Sun., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5 p.m.-11 p.m.
     10. Nhu-Y, 10830 Warner Ave., Fountain Valley, (714) 963-1700. Open 10 a.m.-midnight daily.
     11. Pagolac, 14580 Brookhurst St., Westminster, (714) 531-4740. Open 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. daily.
     12. Pho Tau Bay LTT, 3610 1st St. (continuation of Bolsa Avenue), # C, Santa Ana, (714) 531-6634. Open Tue.-Sat., 8 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sun., 8 a.m.-4 p.m.
     13. Quan Hu-Y, 10212 Westminster Ave., #113, Garden Grove, (714) 636-1652. Open Wed.-Mon., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.
     14. Thanh My, 9553 Bolsa Ave., Westminster, (714) 531-9540. Open Sun.-Thu., 10 a.m.-1:30 a.m.; Fri-Sat., 10 a.m.-2:30 a.m.
     15. Thanh Noi, 9904 Westminster Ave., Garden Grove, (714) 638-1310. Open Mon., Wed., Thu., 10 a.m.-8:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sun., 9 a.m.-9 p.m.
     16. Vien Dong, 14271 Brookhurst St., Garden Grove, (714) 531-8253. Open Wed.-Mon., 9:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
     17. Vien Huong, 14092 Magnolia St., # 116-117, Westminster, (714) 373-1876. Open 9 a.m.-10 p.m. daily.