April 25-May 1, 2002

food

Back to Vietnam

tastes grape, less filling: Bo Nuong La, grilled beef wrapped in grape leaves. Photo By: Christina M. Felice

Open since 1984, the Lai family's restaurant remains a reasonably priced Asian adventure.

by Maxine Keyser

Vietnam221 N. 11th St., 215-592-1163

Sun.-Thu., 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m.

No wheelchair access. No reservations. All major credit cards.

When I first discovered Vietnamese food, I went occasionally to Vietnam on North 11th Street. It opened in 1984, slightly before the incursion of other Asian restaurants to the area, not just Vietnamese but Thai and Cambodian as well, and one could always depend on the Lai family for no-nonsense, well-priced food. You brought your own wine and settled into the Formica-and-fluorescent dining room, and could make a meal from a big, steaming bowl of pho, the traditional noodle soup filled with beef slices, tripe and tendons, and garnished with bean sprouts, lime, basil, cilantro and hot peppers, for $5.95.

You still can have that soup, but oh, how things have changed.

I'm a little older now, and I like a little glamour with my food. Vietnam has got it -- cherry wood wainscoting below warm gold walls, lush palms and mirrors reflecting tiny halogen bulbs beneath beaded shades. Local architect Jesse Gardner has made this once-humble spot into a scene right out of a Marguerite Duras novel. From the exterior, resembling a house in old Saigon, to the newly installed, dimly lit bar, Vietnam certainly is glamorous, but the food is just as good and reasonable as it always was.

I like appetizers more than entrees as a rule, so we start with grilled meatballs (Nem Nuong, $5.95) that are cylinders of ground pork with the taste of the grill, to be wrapped in lettuce leaves, thin rice crepes and lots of mint, then dipped in a hoisin-based sauce. If you have never had Vietnamese food, you will quickly learn that this is an ingredient-driven cuisine, and the ingredients are either meat, chicken or fish with the charcoal scent of the grill and the fragrance of fresh mint, cilantro and lemon grass. Then there are skewers of tender shrimp, grilled with lemon grass (Tom Nuong, $6.95), to dip in the ubiquitous fish sauce, Nuoc Mam, flecked with hot peppers. There is grilled beef wrapped in savory grape leaves (Bo Nuong La, $5.95), and it is most delicious. When I ask Benny Lai, the scion and owner, if they have vines in Vietnam, he replies no --there they use a leaf that is not available here, but which is best approximated by grape leaves. Lai has unfortunate memories of Vietnam, but the family was lucky to make it here in 1977, in a crowded refugee boat, and the rest is history. Today he is more sophisticated and always friendly, and presiding over a restaurant full of people happily chowing down the food of his homeland.

One of the few fried dishes is the spring roll (Cha Gio, three for $4.25) with a crisp skin encasing ground pork, onions and mushrooms -- morsels again to be wrapped in lettuce and mint and dipped in Nuoc Mam. Green papaya salad gives a welcome jolt of cool green to a steamed combo of shrimp and thin slices of pork (Goi Du Duthom Thit, $5.25). This also includes crunchy peanuts; in fact, the menu has a caveat that there are peanuts on many dishes. They are another one of the building blocks of Vietnamese cuisine.

In the Vietnamese style, soup comes at the same time as the entrees. We try the sweet and sour shrimp soup (Canh Chuatom, $8.95), a brew of shrimp, fresh tomatoes, bean sprouts, pineapple and basil. It's very subtle, perhaps a bit too much so, for I would have preferred more sour than sweet. Charcoal-broiled pork chop (Suon Nuong, $7.50) is marinated in lemon grass, soy and hoisin sauce, but is a bit too well-done. The simmered catfish (Ca Khoto, $8.95) is spectacular, though, the sweet fish a counterpoint to the soy, garlic and black pepper in the sauce. As is the shrimp (Tom Khoto, $8.95), this dish is cooked in a clay pot, which seems to impart some flavor to the contents. Of course, there is rice to soak up the flavors, and "333" beer to wash it all down.

Desserts are usually rice-based, so we choose a sweet pudding made with taro root and coconut milk (Chekhoai Mon, $2.95). It is gloppy and dense but very soothing. A beverage called rainbow ice (Chebamau, $2.50) pleases some companions, with its refreshing layers of red bean paste, coconut milk and thin Jell-O. Others are content with Vietnamese coffee ($1.75), filtered in the French style, but served with sweet condensed milk.

At Vietnam, the food is easy on the purse and the palate. I can't think of another Asian cuisine that is as light, fresh and not too spicy. Dieters should rejoice in the choice of salads and grilled dishes -- the food is very much of today's quest for lightness and simplicity, but echoes the fragrant shadows of another ancient land.