Le Regal – Old food, new taste
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
F*ckin¦ tremendous issues here. I¦m very satisfied to see your post. Thank you so much and i’m taking a look ahead to touch you. Will you please drop me a e-mail?
1Hello! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with Search Engine Optimization? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good success. If you know of any please share. Cheers!
2I relish, result in I discovered just what I used to be having a look for. You’ve ended my four day long hunt! God Bless you man. Have a great day. Bye
3I¦ve recently started a web site, the info you offer on this site has helped me tremendously. Thank you for all of your time & work.
4I’m impressed, I must say. Really rarely do I encounter a blog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me let you know, you have got hit the nail on the head. Your idea is excellent; the issue is something that not enough people are speaking intelligently about. I’m very completely satisfied that I stumbled throughout this in my search for one thing referring to this.
5Wow, amazing blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you made blogging look easy. The overall look of your website is excellent, as well as the content!
6Keep working ,great job!
7It’s actually a great and useful piece of information. I am happy that you shared this helpful info with us. Please stay us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.
8I always was concerned in this subject and stock still am, regards for posting.
9Hey there! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for this site? I’m getting sick and tired of WordPress because I’ve had problems with hackers and I’m looking at options for another platform. I would be great if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.
10I’ve recently started a blog, the info you provide on this site has helped me tremendously. Thanks for all of your time & work.
11Keep working ,impressive job!
12Definitely, what a magnificent website and informative posts, I surely will bookmark your website.All the Best!
13You made some good points there. I did a search on the theme and found mainly folks will have the same opinion with your blog.
14Merely a smiling visitor here to share the love (:, btw outstanding design.
15I’m not sure exactly why but this website is loading extremely slow for me. Is anyone else having this issue or is it a issue on my end? I’ll check back later and see if the problem still exists.
16I got what you mean ,saved to favorites, very nice internet site.
17Hi, Neat post. There’s a problem with your site in internet explorer, would test this… IE still is the market leader and a huge portion of people will miss your excellent writing due to this problem.
18Hi , I do believe this is an excellent blog. I stumbled upon it on Yahoo , i will come back once again. Money and freedom is the best way to change, may you be rich and help other people.
19Hey there! I’m at work surfing around your blog from my new iphone 3gs! Just wanted to say I love reading through your blog and look forward to all your posts! Keep up the outstanding work!
20so much good information on here, :D.
21Hey! This is kind of off topic but I need some guidance from an established blog. Is it very hard to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty fast. I’m thinking about creating my own but I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Many thanks
22Nice post. I learn something more challenging on different blogs everyday. It will always be stimulating to read content from other writers and practice a little something from their store. I’d prefer to use some with the content on my blog whether you don’t mind. Natually I’ll give you a link on your web blog. Thanks for sharing.
23Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wished to say that I have truly enjoyed browsing your blog posts. After all I’ll be subscribing to your rss feed and I hope you write again soon!
24I view something truly interesting about your web site so I saved to bookmarks.
25Some times its a pain in the ass to read what people wrote but this site is really user pleasant! .
26Good write-up, I am regular visitor of one’s web site, maintain up the nice operate, and It’s going to be a regular visitor for a long time.
27Perfect piece of work you have done, this web site is really cool with fantastic info .
28An impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little analysis on this. And he in fact bought me breakfast because I found it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love reading more on this topic. If possible, as you become expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more details? It is highly helpful for me. Big thumb up for this blog post!
29Some really fantastic blog posts on this web site, regards for contribution.
30Loving the info on this website , you have done outstanding job on the articles.
31There are some interesting closing dates in this article however I don’t know if I see all of them center to heart. There is some validity but I’ll take maintain opinion till I look into it further. Good article , thanks and we wish more! Added to FeedBurner as well
32he blog was how do i say it… relevant, finally something that helped me. Thanks
33I dugg some of you post as I thought they were invaluable very beneficial
34After examine a couple of of the blog posts in your website now, and I actually like your method of blogging. I bookmarked it to my bookmark web site list and will be checking again soon. Pls check out my web page as nicely and let me know what you think.
35I have been surfing online more than 3 hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It is pretty worth enough for me. In my opinion, if all web owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the web will be much more useful than ever before.
36hello!,I like your writing so much! proportion we communicate more approximately your post on AOL? I require a specialist on this area to solve my problem. May be that is you! Looking forward to peer you.
37Hello There. I found your blog using msn. This is a really well written article. I will make sure to bookmark it and return to learn more of your useful information. Thanks for the post. I will certainly return.
38I have read several good stuff here. Certainly worth bookmarking for revisiting. I wonder how much effort you put to make such a excellent informative website.
39Very clear site, thankyou for this post.
40I’ve recently started a blog, the information you offer on this website has helped me greatly. Thanks for all of your time & work.
41whoah this blog is great i love reading your articles. Keep up the great work! You know, a lot of people are searching around for this information, you can aid them greatly.
42Thanks , I’ve just been looking for information approximately this subject for ages and yours is the greatest I have found out so far. But, what about the bottom line? Are you positive concerning the supply?
43Appreciate it for helping out, good information.
44I’ll immediately grab your rss as I can’t find your e-mail subscription link or newsletter service. Do you’ve any? Please let me know so that I could subscribe. Thanks.
45Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Regardless, just wanted to say superb blog!
46This is very interesting, You are a very skilled blogger. I’ve joined your rss feed and look forward to seeking more of your fantastic post. Also, I’ve shared your site in my social networks!
47I’d constantly want to be update on new content on this web site, saved to bookmarks! .
48Great site. Plenty of useful information here. I’m sending it to a few friends ans also sharing in delicious. And obviously, thanks for your sweat!
49I like this web blog very much so much superb info .
50