Paul Kwan gives us a taste of Vietnamese restaurants around the world.
When I first came to San Francisco from Vietnam in 1976 only a handful of Southeast Asian restaurants existed in the city. A tiny Vietnamese restaurant located at Sixth and Market Street was one of the only places where I could get comfort through the food of my homeland.
I grew up in Cholon, the Chinese section of Saigon. My family, like most Asian families, was obsessed with food. When we were young, the first thing my sister and I would decide on early every morning was what kind of noodle soup we wanted for breakfast. There were at least twenty-five kinds to choose from.
When I arrived in San Francisco, my food obsessions (practiced since childhood) remained strong. And with time, as more Southeast Asian immigrants arrived more restaurants opened. Through the grapevine I once heard of a little Thai cafe on Ellis Street where they served an excellent bowl of noodle soup. Walking down Polk to Ellis through the heavy morning fog I found the cafe. The soup was good and I was happy. That was 1976. Years later, the Thai cafe was sold to a Chinese owner and the chef at the time was Dennis Wong. One day, a young woman named Annie walked into the cafe and ordered stir-fried noodles. She ate as much as she could and shyly asked the waiter to wrap up what was left on her plate so that she could have it for dinner. A few years later, Annie married Dennis Wong.
Dennis and Annie Wong now run Le Soleil (The Sun, in French), one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in San Francisco. It offers excellent food at reasonable prices, pleasant decor and attentive service.
My favorite items on the menu begin in the appetizer section. There are shrimp cups (banh khot): little rice-flour cups filled with mung bean paste and shrimp and served with mint, lettuce and pickled onion on the side and a small bowl of fish sauce for dipping. My other favorite is an omelet (banh xeo), that contains shrimp, chicken and bean sprouts. The raw beef salad (bo tai chanh) is thinly sliced beef cured in lime juice, garnished with minced cilantro, thinly sliced white onion, chopped peanuts, chili, and fish sauce. If you enjoy carpaccio, you should try this dish.
For an entree, Le Soleil does a tasty version of Vietnamese grilled pork chops, succulent and well marinated. There is also a clay pot dish of cat fish fillet (ca kho to) which is cooked in a reduction of fish sauce, sugar and hot dried chili. The clay pot with sliced pork (thit kho to) is similarly cooked and equally good. Jumbo prawns in a clay pot (tom cang kho to) is another typical Vietnamese dish using giant shrimp from Southeast Asia and simmered like other clay pot recipes except the sauce is prepared using the shrimp eggs from the head which gives a perfumed taste to this dish.
Le Soleil also does a very good rendition of five-spiced roast chicken (ga ngu vi huong), as well as traditional Vietnamese hot and sour soup (canh chua) with either shrimp or fish. A variety of noodle soups are eaten throughout the day in Vietnam for breakfast, lunch, afternoon snacks and sometimes for dinner.
For lunch at Le Soleil one can choose from an excellent variety of noodle soups such as bun nuoc leo which is a rice noodle soup with shrimp and cat fish slices in a sweet, pungent broth infused with lemon grass and fermented fish paste. Mint, shredded cabbage and fresh chili are served on the side to add texture to the soup. If you like spicy food, add a dash of chili-garlic sauce (tuong ot toi). Don’t confuse chili-garlic sauce with the reddish pink tuong ot sriracha sauce that is commonly used in beef noodle soup pho.
The beef and pig’s feet rice noodle soup (bun bo gio heo hue) is delicious, although not spicy enough for my taste. I like mine with a layer of chili floating on top of the soup. Traditionally, shredded banana blossom is served on the side, but in America people substitute bean sprouts and shredded cabbage.
Bun ruei, a tomato-based rice noodle soup with minced pork and crab meat (sometimes crab roe) is quite satisfying as a quick lunch followed by an iced coffee to clean the palate.
Le Soleil has a small yet interesting menu and I highly recommend exploring the dishes with a few friends. Dinner for four runs approximately sixty-five dollars, including beer.
My mother and my older sister, Diane, have always been strong influences on my taste in food. An excellent chef in her own right, Diane will go to great lengths to get what she wants to cook or to eat.
On a recent gastronomic (what other kind
could there possibly be) trip to Hong Kong, with the temperature in the nineties
and the humidity almost as high, Diane drove us around in her air-conditioned
car to sample all kinds of foods including a variety of noodle soups. My
philosophy when traveling is that to fully appreciate the culture of a country
one must sample the local cuisine. Hong Kong being the hub of Asia, we sampled
dishes from north, south, east and west. We ate four or five meals a day.
One day while we were in the Central district, I suggested to Diane that we
would like to treat her to Indochine 1929, a restaurant which we heard about in
San Francisco. She hesitated but agreed to stop by the restaurant to make a
reservation since we were in the neighborhood.
As we were making a reservation with the manager, Mr. Hong, Diane and her friend began to look around. All of a sudden, screams of joy came from an area of the restaurant where there was a display of exotic fruits. “Xoai cat....xoai cat....,” Diane shouted. “I haven’t had this kind of mango since I left Vietnam twenty years ago.”
Mr. Hong said, “Yes, we imported these mangos directly from Vietnam.”
“Can I buy a few?” My sister softened her voice, almost begging.
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Hong, “They are only for the customers who dine in the restaurant.” Diane looked disappointed. We made a reservation for lunch the next day, though unfortunately at the last minute Diane could not join us.
We started our lunch with hot and sour fish soup (canh chua ca). A traditional Vietnamese hot and sour soup is quite different from the northern Chinese version. The Vietnamese base has sweet and tart tasting vegetables like bach ha and me. In America, one can find tomato as well as pineapple in the soup. The texture of the ca loc fish used in Vietnam is quite sublime, the substitute at Indochine 1929 is edible and surprisingly the soup also came with shrimp which was not listed on the menu.
The Mekong Delta provides many varieties of wonderful fish. I grew up eating ca chien xa ot, pan fried fresh whole fish marinated with chili and lemongrass. The fish is cleaned, then salted and peppered lightly inside and out, rubbed with minced garlic and lemongrass, and allowed to marinate for about thirty minutes. Pan fried at medium heat until the skin is crisp and golden, the deep fried version will allow you to eat the fish bones and head, considered a delicacy and a source of calcium. The ca chien xa ot at Indochine 1929 was filleted and tasted like catfish. The Hanoi-style fish (cha ca ha noi) came in a covered pot and had been simmered in an aromatic broth with turmeric and dressed with cilantro and dill.
By the third dish, I gave up the notion that I was eating in an authentic Vietnamese restaurant. Rather it was a hybrid of Chinese, Vietnamese and a touch of French.
We also sampled caramelized glazed spareribs (suon ram), stuffed mushrooms with fish mousse, and southern Vietnamese stir-fried rice noodles with pork, shrimp and vegetables (hu tieu xao). All were quite tasty.
For dessert, we asked for the xoai cat. The reply from the waiter was: “I am sorry, those mangos are for display only.” I raised my voice a little bit and in an insistent tone said, “Your manager, Mr. Hong, told us yesterday that the mangos are imported for the customers who dine in this establishment. We will not leave this place until we have those mangos.” The waiter disappeared to consult with the assistant manager, returned and said, “We will be glad to serve you the very last ones we have.”
The mangos were delicious, sweet and fragrant without any stringy fibers. The mangos brought back memories of the visits I made as a child to my grandmother’s orchard in the Vietnamese countryside. We ate only half the fruit and gave the other half to my pleasantly surprised sister. Lunch for three was $155 dollars, without wine or beer.
Across the harbor on the Kowloon side, we went to a small Vietnamese restaurant called Lee Cam Kee, a friendly establishment that featured authentic Vietnamese food. Lee Cam Kee does a very good rendition of spring rolls (cha gio), beef noodle soup (pho), chicken vermicelli soup (mien ga), and BBQ brochette with flat rice noodles (banh hoi thi bo nuong). Lee Cam Kee serves the best Vietnamese chicken curry that I have had since I left Vietnam years ago. Dinner for six was eighty-five dollars, without beer or wine.