Flavor Boulevard

Bánh chưng and bánh tét to the Vietnamese Tết are like turkey and ham to the American Thanksgiving. The holiday feast just wouldn’t feel right without them. Although I have blogged about these sticky rice squares and logs before, the lunar new year has come back, and so are they. Sticky rice can be uberfilling in large quantity, and like all festive food, it’s not recommended that you feast on these dense beasts day after day, as satisfaction would turn into tiresomeness. But once a year, or maybe twice, a couple slices of banh tet sound so much more interesting than cereal, rice, even noodle soup.

Banh chung and banh tet have rather similar ingredients, especially when they’re made by Vietnamese Southerners. Both are wrapped in leaves (although slightly different kinds of leaves), and boiled for hours in water that is sometimes spiced with lemongrass. After cooking, a heavy weight is put on banh chung to drain the water, while banh tet are rolled around to perfect the cylindrical shape. I remember we used to hang pairs of banh tet in my grandfather’s kitchen, taking one down everyday during the week of Tet to whip out a nice settling meal with thịt kho trứng (pork and egg stew), dưa giá (pickled bean sprout),  and spring rolls. There are the savory kind with meat and mung bean paste, and the vegan kind for those who want to practice self-control on the first day of Tet. In Houston, my mom usually gets the savory kind from Giò Chả Đức Hương, where we also get our cha lua supply, and the vegan kind from Linh Son pagoda. I branched out this year and tried a meaty log from Huong Lan Sandwiches 4 in Milpitas.

Their banh tet measures about 7 inches long, making eight thick nice slices, each has a chunk of fatty pork in the middle, pink and spiced with pepper. The sticky rice coat here gave its leaf wrapping a bit insecure sliminess when we first unraveled, but all was well. The banh tet smelled great, the sticky rice has a tight but soft texture. The seasoned bean paste is just salty enough to intrigue. In some way, banh tet is better than banh chung because every bite guarantees a bit of everything. No piece will miss the meat completely and no bite will get all the meat, the stuffing is even throughout the whole banh.  It was honestly good by itself without condiments. Huong Lan Sandwiches had not failed me.

And neither did Thao Tien. When we got there last week in our quail quest, Thao Tien’s employees were busy running a small table pyramidized with banh chung and banh tet. They locate nicely in front of the Grand Century mall, passed by hundreds of people Tet shopping that day. Seeing the sale went like hot cakes (the sticky rice cakes were actually still warm), we were too eager to snatch one home that we forgot to check the tiny white sticker on the side. Surprise, we had grabbed a bánh tét chuối (banana banh tet).

It’s solely vegan. The sticky rice coat is made interesting with dots of black beans on shiny green background. The core is sweet, mushy banana in a reddish purple hue. This is just the usual ivory banana that always ripe too soon, but somehow slow cooking in a compact block of sticky rice wrapped by banana leaves makes the fruit change color. Chemical reactions? It still tastes sweet, with a hint of bitter (for lack of a better word) like a guava skin. And it looks beautiful to me.

The banana banh tet also goes well with my rotisserie chicken from Safeway, minus the guilt of defeating the whole vegan purpose thing. Thao Tien’s logs are also shamelessly long, almost two times bigger than Huong Lan’s. I will be eating banh tet every day for the rest of the week. Happy Tết to bánh tét and me!

Address: Hương Lan Sandwiches 4
41 Serra Way, Ste. 108
Milpitas, CA 95035
1 bánh tét with meat: $6

Thảo Tiên restaurant
Grand Century Mall
1111 Story Road #1080
San Jose, CA 95122
1 vegan banana bánh tét: $10

It must have been at least 4 months since we last went to Thao Tien, and I’ve been telling myself to blog about this place ever since, but for some reason every record of our visit had mysteriously disappeared. Did I not take picture? What happened to the receipt? I have no idea. But the amazing taste of roasted quails haunts me in my sleep. We just had to go back to take pictures again, and it’s only appropriate to complete this last hour of the Ox year with the best of birdies.

Thao Tien actually specializes in hủ tíu, a noodle soup with slightly sweet broth, chewy noodle, fried shallot, usually accompanied by pork and shrimp (I blogged about it before at Bún Bò Huế Cố Đô). With the southern Vietnamese theme, the house not only has their waiters dress in áo bà ba but also extends its menu to include the less commonly seen savories like chim cút rô-ti (roasted quail) and cá kèo kho tiêu (a kind of freshwater fish – the “elongate mudskipper“, if you absolutely must know – simmered in fish sauce and caramel sauce much like cá kho tộ, but with a lot of black pepper for kicks). Among the daily specials, Mudpie was excited about the ca keo kho tieu, but unfortunately it was only served for dinner that day. Still, the quails are up for grab anytime, and expensive as they were ($7.95 for 2 birds), we drove 50 miles here just for them.

The birds, split and stretched, were just as long as my hand from nail to wrist. Their plump breasts and legs rival those of a frog, no fat, just honest meat and thin crispy skin. The marinade seeped through every strand of muscle in that  vibrant little body. Lemon and salt pepper mix came with them, but was unnecessary, the birds needed no aid to taste good. The moment we grabbed them, our fingers got busy tearing them apart, and our eyes focused on getting every scrap off the bones. Table manners we lost, vicious  beasts we became. And the aftermath:

I remember the hủ tíu here is good, bò lúc lắc (shaken beef) is quite delicious, Hainanese chicken rice is not the most exciting thing, but if I could, I would come here every week just for the quail.  Thank goodness Thao Tien isn’t close to me, or I’d go bankrupt being a quailitarian.

Cost:
1 shaken beef (9.75) + 1 Hainanese chicken rice (8.50) + 2 roasted quail (7.95)
+ tax
= $28.62

Friendly service and spacious setting.

Address: Thao Tien Restaurant
Grand Century Mall
1111 Story Rd #1080
San Jose, CA 95122
(408) 283-9231

The lunar new year comes a bit late this time. The first day of Tet coincides with Valentine’s Day on a Sunday. Can you imagine how big it is for the Asian expats? The other years Tet happened during the week, people have to work, kids have classes, maybe even tests. Who knows what a pop quiz on that first day can do to a child that whole year? Tet in Vietnam is in the spring, but for the expats in the western hemisphere, if Tet comes a bit too early, like in January, then it’d still be coat-and-cold-nose time. So yeah, it’s big this year.

In the past few days it’s been snowing in Texas and everything, but the weather here has gotten fairly springlike. The hills are all fuzzily green, purplish pink flowers blooming on the side streets (I know nothing about botany, but my guess is they are related to cherry blossoms somehow), spring showers come every now and then just to wet your eyebrows. The employment rate may still be low in Cali, but there was no sign of a recession in San Jose last weekend. The parking lots at Lion and the Grand Century mall were packed. It was like Black Friday sale. Cars were moving bumper to bumper trying to get in and out and maybe a spot. We went through maybe 8 songs on the CD while waiting to make a right turn to the other side of the mall. Of course it was also the big Super Bowl day, but we could tell that Vietnamese men and women really paid attention to football.

…Maybe if football looked like bầu cua… Lots of these tables were set along the sidewalk at Grand Century mall, some are games I’ve never seen before. My family used to play bầu cua during Tet, just a small game of dice to pass time. I liked it because of the pictures: a shrimp, a crab (“cua”), a wine gourd (“bầu”, hence the name of the game), a rooster, a fish, and a deer, which are also the six sides of the dice. Ah, sweet memories of the candies I won…

But not everyone was out for playing games, most of the women seemed to come here for the same reason I had: the food. Tet is not Tet without fridgefuls, counterfuls, pantryfuls, freezerfuls, and extrabellifuls of food. Banh chung banh tet are essential, but not the only thing. Lion supermarket had an entire aisle dedicated for pickles and mắm (cured fish, which can be eaten fresh out of the jar with white rice, cooked in a hot pot, or steamed with egg and pork to make a kind of meat loaf). It’s not nước mắm (fish sauce, that goes with banh cuon and bun thit nuong), not mắm nêm or mắm tôm (other kinds of dipping sauces), it’s visible cuts and strips of fish in jars of seasonings. As for pickles, the most popular choice for Tet must be củ kiệu (the bulb of Allium chinense). Its pungency is between scallion and garlic, a fresh change of taste from the overindulgent fatty pork stews, eggs and sticky rice of Tet. See your favorite pickle anywhere?

Enough salt? Want something sweet? The bakeries in Grand Century were ready to get you. Usually people were there for the green waffle, now they were there for even more green waffles plus boxes of Tet toothsies. They are not candies, they are not jam (if you’re British) or jelly (if you’re American), they are not simple dried fruits, they are not glacé. They are mứt, fruits whole and sliced, quickly stir-fried in sugar syrup, just sweet enough to last a month or two, but the fruit flavor should still be there. The lady told me not to take pictures, but I did anyway.

On the other hand, the flower stands didn’t mind me taking pictures at all. In fact, there were more people taking pictures with these flamboyants than people buying them. It may be too timid a miniature of Nguyen Hue flower market, but its spirit is high, that of both the visitors hungry for a look of Tet and of the buds and petals blooming despite the foreign cold.

The northern đào (peach flower) can make it here. The southern mai doesn’t, but Tet needs a yellow flower, so people in San Jose pick a vine with bright yellow blossoms and call it the “vine mai”. I have no idea what the vine actually is, but it’d make beautiful canopies.

Then firecrackers popped their sporadic crunchy strings of sound. The pavement turned red. Old and middle-aged men in dark jackets gathered in large groups, hunching over little sets of Chinese chess (yes, chess, not Chinese checker!). They don’t make loud acclaims, many just watched the chess pieces and sank in thought. Their greying hair felt another spring breeze, clinging onto the memories of how a festive tradition should be celebrated. Thirty years from now, will the next generation be in their place?

You know how some dishes just instantly come up when you think of certain places? Those are the dishes that always get served when you go on tours to the region they’re associated with, like barbecue in Texas, crawfish in Louisiana, crab in Maryland, clam in the little island Nantucket of Massachusetts. Well, in the deep south Mekong delta of Vietnam, where there are more rivers and canals than Venice, freshwater fish multiply like crazy and the countryside inhabitants make fish dishes like crazy. But for some reason, the name “Mekong Delta” is always linked with “cá kho tộ” (fish simmered in claypot). Why?

The fish (usually catfish) is cut up into thick sections across the body, skin and bone intact (scales off, though), simmered in fish sauce and caramel sauce until it turns beautifully brown inside and out. The mixed sauce is thick and savory, it’s sweet, it’s salty, it can spike up your senses if you add a fillip of chili pepper. Some might argue that fish can taste good by themselves, but this sauce alone would make every mouth water. I’d take the sauce and the sauce-soaked skin anytime over the flesh.

Then again, I had never thought about eating it when I was in Vietnam. Footless animals don’t appeal to me, footless animals with stinky needle bones ready to get stuck in my esophagus appeal to me even less. Footless animals with stinky needle bones were also too abundant, too cheap, and too easy to get when I was there, that boredom won over appreciation of taste. Pick any little food shack for workers on the streets of Saigon, any family-owned eatery by the side of the highway, any book about Southern Vietnamese cuisine, you’re bound to find two things: cá kho tộ and canh chua. It became trite. Little did I know that one day I’d only find it  again in an expensive restaurant in Berkeley.

A few restaurants in Bellaire advertise claypot fish in their menus, but usually say they’re out when you order. It could just be because the dish takes quite some time to make, and scrubbing away those little clay pots with caramelized sauce and fish isn’t really a desirable job. So I was ecstatic when they actually had it at Le Regal (just one good meal after another). The pot came out hot and sizzling, two slabs of fish steaks snuggled in the bubbling golden brown addiction. Fish had never smelled so good. The order does not come with rice, but plain white rice is a must, unless you want to slowly take in nibbles and licks overpacked with flavors.  Be sure to save a bit of rice to clean the pot after all the fish is gone.

Price: about $12-13. (This menu is completely out of date on the price, and does not have all the dishes currently served, but nonetheless it can give you an idea of what they have.)

Address: Le Regal
2126 Center Street, Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 845-4020

Click here to read Holy Basil‘s recipe of ca kho to.

The French colonizers brought many things to Vietnam – Catholic churches, potatoes, veston, coffee and rubber tree plantations, to name a few – but perhaps their baking recipes have left the sweetest memories. Some of those recipes were modified, like the baguette with extra leavening became the crisp and light banh mi, or the croissant with extra butter which is crisp at the two horns (to match its Vietnamese name – “water buffalo’s horn”), golden and shiny at the bottom, more substantial inside, subtly salty, and smells delicious from several feet away. Some names have mysteriously disappeared from the world wide web of delicacies and can only be found in Vietnamese conversations, Vietnamese bakeries, and Vietnamese food blogs – the pâte chaud falls into this category. But many stay true to their origin, like the choux à la crème, the gâteau, and the buche de Noel.

There’s the frosting. It can be white chocolate, coffee, hazelnut, even durian flavor, but the traditional dark chocolate ganache is best in my opinion. There’s the middle layer to resemble tree rings, chocolate again is great but pineapple jam if you like it fruity but not too sweet. There’s the layer of spongy génoise, soft, light, plain, a levee to keep the palates from a sugar flood. As for decoration, powder sugar would make a good snow, meringue mushroom to look more botanical, a couple of icing roses, branches, or pine trees to be Christmasy, some fresh raspberries for a little tart.

The Vietnamese keep the tradition of a strictly European réveillon even after the French left, no member of spring rolls, rice noodle, sticky rice, sweet bean paste and the gang are allowed, but goose is extremely welcome and buche de Noel is a must. Then we crossed the sea and here in America although Christmas desserts are overwhelming – fruitcakes, gingerbread, pumpkin pies, mince pies, banana bread, candies and cookies – la buche de Noel doesn’t exist. Why is that? We brought over the turkey, the ham, the Christmas tree, even the actual Yule log to be burnt in the fireplace, why is the edible and delicious Yule log left behind?

Anyway, our little homesick craving has been found in a Vietnamese bakery northwest of Houston. Made by preorder, each log costs $29 at Xuan Huong.

Address: Xuân Hương Bakery
13480 Veterans Memorial Dr. Suite D
(in the same shopping center with Hong Kong Market #3)
Houston, TX 77014

(281) 895-6553

Drop the ingredients into the boiling stock, let ’em bob up and down while you watch and chat, tak’em out and whack’em on top of a wad of noodle, pour a ladle of broth, and inhale the sweet steam… So what constitutes a good hot pot? Well, the stock is of course the key, then it’s common practice to have some meat, seafood, vegetables (some kind of leafy greens and mushroom), some noodle for the starch base. But there is no set rule. Whatever you want in your mouth, you can put into the hot pot. We opted for the half-and-half stock: Vietnamese lau and Japanese shabu. The two are quite similar, but the Vietnamese lau has tomato and is slightly more seasoned. Both stocks contain green onion and sweet onion, the taste is neutral, neither too salty nor too sweet, just downright savory. In increasing order, you can add more tomatoes, pineapple, or tamarind to make it sour, and any kind of chili pepper until your eyes water.

Canadian style thin egg noodle went well with everything. As for the add-ons, we also picked the moderate route, with beef rib eye, beef meat ball (hidden behind the Napa cabbage), broccoli and spinach, fish ball and tiger prawn, a garlic sesame oil sauce (suggested by the waitress but did little to enhance the flavor). Opinions split about the fish balls: Mother and Mudpie like their soft, almost gummy texture, while the rest of the crew voted for the firm and definitive beef balls, which I believe contain ground bits of tendon.

We forwent beansprouts and mushrooms to make room for the yau ja kwai (or dau chao quay, Chinese deep fried bread sticks, usually accompanying soups and porridge). Its misleading name in the menu, “Chinese donuts”, gave the impression of sugar glaze, perhaps even rainbow sprinkles and chocolate? Asian cooks are inventive, but we are not that Picassoesque. No, they are just simple crispy oily sticks of dough to jazz up yet another texture in the variety. Their fluffiness soaks up the broth, delivers it to your mouth packaged and speedy. I remember dau chao quay in Saigon are a tad more salty and less flaky than those served here. The owner of this restaurant is Chinese, so perhaps he prefers it the original way.

Address: Hot Pot City
8300 W. Sam Houston Pwy
Sugarland, TX 77478
832-328-3888

Price:
1 Half-n-Half soup base for 6: 8.95
3 Noodle: 3 x 3.50
+ beef rib eye slice, beef meat ball, fish ball, tiger prawn, napa cabbage, spinach, broccoli, dau chao quay, garlic sesame oil sauce
= total +tax: 57.72

The bill is softer (~$35) if you order the pre-selected combinations and let the kitchen surprise you with what goes into your bowls. Either way, hot pot might just be the easiest solution for a small gathering, as everyone can pick their favorite ingredients, cook and enjoy at the table in their own way without the worries about preparation and post-party cleanup. It can be problematic if a member has some hard feelings against soups or anything cooked in liquids. They would then have to enjoy the posh fractal designs on the walls and Lady Gaga’s rhythmic gnarling in the background, since the menu here offers nothing but hot pot.

When asked about Vietnamese food, Americans usually think of phở busily churned out in small noodle houses crowded with plastic chairs and formica tables. Naturally, since most immigrants gather in their community, the variety of traditional food can only circulate in specific areas. A small fraction of the people have settled in a predominantly American neighborhood long enough and are acquainted with the system enough to set up a business, but they often target the young customers with adventurous taste. Meanwhile, most young customers can only afford low price, hence phở and other easily-made noodle dishes make their way to the top.

Careful circumspection would show that pasta alla carbonara requires no more effort than bún thịt nướng, so is it just a matter of gaudy names, flashy advertisement, and aging familiarity that brought one into fancy menus but not the other?

By no means do I want to sound like a snob, but every now and then I get cravings for a nice dinner in a restaurant aptly labeled “restaurant”. Ladles of this melting cheese and mounts of that grated cheese just no longer light the candle. A retouch of Far Eastern eloquence was much needed to make the aesthetic night.

The price is a little steep, but here are clothed tables, warm lights, an all-English menu, little to no disturbances from foreign chattering in the kitchen and among customers. A middle-aged woman, busy like a humming bird, scampered from kitchen to tables with plates in one hand, orders and bills in the other. For a restaurant with a fair size like Le Regal, one-person play seems a little overwhelming. But it works, our food was served within the time it took for us to make a few glances at the decor and exchange some daily news.

Fried rice is an easy dish, if you throw in some meat, some egg, some legumes, some salt and soy sauce, it can be called well done. Its volatility allows the cook to break free from shackles of recipes, and the eaters to relax from judging its missing-this or extra-that. There’s no fixed list of ingredients, no fixed standard other than appealing to the mouth, hence no objective criterion to rank a plate of fried rice among others. But if we were to nitpick, creativity would pump this one fried rice on top of all other Asian concoctions I’ve had, simply because of the addition of pineapple. There were only a few wedges in that mount, but pineapple is not one to be bullied by other ingredients, its tamed acidity seeps through every grain of rice, sweeter and more thorough than a squeeze of lemon. It helps lowering the guilt of consuming chicken, shrimp, scallops, pork, fried egg and zillions of molecules of saturated fat in frying oil. The rice also made tasty leftover for the next day.

As much as the cook was generous with the protein and the starch, they also gave us enough veggies for ten. At other Vietnamese restaurants, a small plate of sprouts topped with some basil is the usual allowance. Here came a basket of mounting garden goodies. I hadn’t seen any bunch of greens this big for years, especially since we weren’t asking for phở. Not sure what to do, we made lettuce wraps with bean sprout, a couple of leaves of basil and mint, and grilled beef from the other dish we ordered. Dipped in nuoc mam, the wraps were rad.

I’ve blogged about bánh hỏi thịt nướng before, so instead of blabbing about the lacy texture, I’d just say that this was delicious. Now clearly it’s a bit disproportionate, nowhere in Vietnam would you find so much meat accompanying so little banh hoi, the rice vermicelli must be the base. But the food pyramid seems to be upside down in America, where meat is vital in keeping you thin and at all cost one must say no to starch. The cook also went bizerk with deep fried shallots and crush peanuts, but those are easily brushed off if you’re not into contaminating grilled beef with relatives of vegetables.

Together with Tomatina, Alborz, some Mexican eatery, and Top Dog, Le Régal makes Center Street a road of international cuisine, of course an addition of kangaroo ragout and kitfo would be nice.

Bill before tip: $26.23 – dinner for two and leftover lunch for one.

Address:
Le Regal
2126 Center Street (between Oxford & Shattuck)
Berkeley, CA 94704

Appetizer: green waffle
The batter is flavored with pandan leaf (lá dứa) extract and coconut milk. Mudpie first discovered them at Century Bakery in Little Saigon, San Jose, and that’s where we’ve been getting them since, in increasing amount. The most recent deal is buy 10 get 1 free, warm and prepackaged in a nice paper box. Then I had green waffle for breakfast for 3 days straight. Each waffle is about $1-1.50, rather costly if you think about how a banh mi costs only 2.50. But it’s delicious, fluffy and sweet.

Main course: Mo’s Bacon bar

You can have bacon with breakfast pancakes, and in BLT (bacon-lettuce-tomato) sandwich for lunch, so might as well stuff it into your chocolate for a late night snack, right? The lady who discovered the magic of bacon-chocolate combo had 6 years of culinary study, and she got it right: chocolate goes with everything, and so does salt. The bar isn’t a slab of bacon coated with chocolate (which is kinda what I hoped for). There are only tiny bits of bacon, even more scarce than in a simple salad. An unhealthy dose of smoked salt gives a boost to the milky sweet taste. This chocolate is not extraordinary, but it might be a good gift for those unadventurous eaters (to prove that “crazy” food can be good). Take a look at the list of Vosges’ exotic chocolate bars. Perhaps I’ll tackle them when I see them at Whole Foods, although they are not that exotic except for the names.

Dessert: hibiscus sorbet

After the wonderful engagement with cardamom-rose ice cream, I became a bee with fantasies about flower flavors. The petals are always delicate, their taste swift and light, a safe choice if you want to avoid extremes. So I grabbed this as soon as I saw it at the store. Well, being a sorbet, it lacked the creamy texture of ice cream, and the taste was a bit rusty. I felt a chemically enhanced sweetness in the throat as it passed down. We can never expect too highly of mass production, but again, I haven’t chewed on a hibiscus flower to know what it really tastes like. The sorbet was worth a chat, and I shall not retract my tongue from other floral attractions.

Next on Down the Aisles: Yeast Cookies

That time of the year has come. Time for the first midterm exam of the undergraduates, and the first exam-grading party of the graduate students. Time for looking back and asking what have I been doing since school started, beside avoiding my advisor for fear of his question “how is the research going?”. Time for kids to buy lanterns, if you’re in Vietnam, and for adults to return home, if you’re in Korea. Time for Walmart, Michael’s, Kroger and the gang to pull out a full display of Halloween and Thanksgiving colors. Time for Asian expats to savour their mooncakes.

It isn’t called “mooncake” for no reason. There’s a moon inside the cake. A bright deep yellow egg yolk, salted to perfection. I always eat this last, putting the whole ball in my mouth and slowly eroding it away. The background of the “moon” can be anything, from assorted nuts and lap cheong to sweetened bean paste. Kinh Do churned out the green tea version (nonexistent in Saigon when I was there 5 years ago). Talk about 2-in-1 convenience, now you don’t have to drink tea while eating mooncakes anymore.

Some prefer the crust to the ubersugary filling. I’m one of them. So they make the dough into shapes of little piglets. My officemate and I laughed so hard the other day when we found out that both the Singaporeans and the Vietnamese do that, although in different ways. Vietnamese people have the baby pigs surrounding a mommy pig, herself a big mooncake with all the stuffing and egg yolks inside. The Singaporeans make it easy for kids to take their piggy around:

I always find it hard to eat the piggy. It’s like eating a gummy bear, you know, should you decapitate him first, or attack from below?
Do other Asian countries have piggy mooncake too?

There is this McDonald’s pretty much right across the street from the old Physics building where I went to college. It made good business. College kids, tight pockets, tight schedule, empty stomach, of course. But good old days are no more. The Big M is nonexistent here, although all the above conditions still hold. The Physics building is inconveniently located in the middle of campus, which is at least 15 minutes strolling to the nearest food in any direction (on-campus diners don’t count). The shortest voyage if you’re facing south leads to the corner Durant-Bowditch. A yellow sign gently says “Le Cheval – Saigon Cuisine, Est. 1986”, with green vines, sunshine patio, and “cash only”.

The place is usually packed during lunch peak. (This picture was taken at 3 pm.) There are about a dozen dishes on the counter, you pay a fix price for a combo rice plate, and make your own. I haven’t tried those, because it would take more time than to order a bowl of pho. Actually I said “noodle soup”, and the white man at the cashier politely asked, in well-toned Vietnamese, “phở bò?” :-). I paid, poured myself a glass of water, sat down with a number. Two minutes later a guy, tray in hand, zigzagged from the back kitchen through numerous chairs and conversations. My pho was ready, snuggly next to the usual bountiful plate of bean sprouts and mints. I don’t recall my double cheeseburgers coming to me faster than that, especially when there are 50 customers around. Arguably, this phở is a more heart-warming encounter. What else would you expect from a big bowl with lotsa meat?

Speediness aside, Le Cheval has something else worth coming for: phở sans broth and all that steamy business. I haven’t seen this dish anywhere else. It appears under the name “stir-fried phở” on page 3 of the menu. It has the combined quality of pad thai and jap chae. A delicate yet enduring texture. It’s phở you can eat with a fork and ease. It’s phở you can take your time handling without making it disintegrate into the sea of broth. And take time you must, for it’s a big plate.

The veggies and shrimps are just makeup on a natural beauty, and probably for the health-conscious. The noodle is already savoury by itself.

Side note: the chopsticks here might be a little too short, and I always get loaded with guilt when putting my finished bowl (with broth) into the plastic bins for dirty dishes. Fatty liquid streaming out and coating the bowls isn’t a pretty sight. On the plus size, self-service saves you on tips, and all the more reason to order pho xao if you have time.

Address: Le Petit Cheval
2600 Bancroft Way (between Bowditch St and College Ave)
Berkeley, CA 94704
510-704-8018