 “You girls know how to eat”, our hostess smiled at us, the check attached. Ten things. At a tapas place like Vanessa’s Bistro where everything sounds tasty, I’d say we did a pretty good job narrowing down our choices, and we asked for the house recommendations only three times. All rendered success. The first decision was the easiest: we’d got to get the sweet potato fries. Neither mushy like their orange cousins nor mealy like the white kinds, these Okinawan sweet potatoes, or purple yams, are sturdy in texture and just gently sweet. With or without the ginger aioli, they were loved. The small plates also stood alone splendidly, not that their dipping sauce came short. Black pepper cured filet carpaccio with roasted peanuts, fried shallots and Asian mint (húng quế). A twist on the classic Vietnamese bò nhúng dấm (carpaccio with vinegar) bò tái chanh (carpaccio with lime). (Thanks for the correction, Linh-Dang!) Continue reading Vanessa’s Bistro, sweet and savory the Vietnamese way
 I was going to name this post “Dark dining,” but thought I should continue the French theme. We had French lunch, and here’s French dinner on the same day (we should have gotten a croissant for breakfast that morning for completeness, but oh well…). Sorry for the invisible pictures, didn’t want to disturb other customers around with the flash, and like an idiot I didn’t remember to switch my camera to candle light mode. I don’t know if that would have helped any though, the candle you see in the picture above is the only light source on the table. They meant to make a dreamy romantic setting, not one for inspection. Let’s go straight to the food: 1. they were tasty, 2. they were small. Actually the girl next to our table couldn’t help but cried out the second remark when the food was brought to her, she also made a quick approximation that you could get 20 cheeseburgers from McDonald for the price of one of these dishes. That is true, but I don’t think I would enjoy 20 cheeseburgers as much as I enjoyed my pate chaud stuffed with quail (pictured), which […]
Continue reading At Shokolaat, dine slowly the French way
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