Flavor Boulevard

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?

We came back, and it was new. The menu is a laminated extensive list. The construction was finished. The booths are filled. The space was lushed with soothing 80’s music. The dishes were brought out one after another all too quickly.

Appetizer 1: tôm chiên cốm (fried shrimp coated with crispy green rice, pictured above). Little seasoning is added, the flavor relies on the shrimps’ freshness and the cốm‘s natural confection. Pure novelty. The shrimps come in flock of five.

Appetizer 2: mango salad. Here’s my guess: a squirt of lemon, a pinch of sugar, a half-ripe mango (to keep the crunchy but not so much the sour), a pinch of sesame seeds for colors, and again, five rosy boiled shrimps for protein. It’s refreshmunchtastic.

Entree 1: bò lúc lắc (shaken beef). I don’t know who came up with the name “shaken beef”. It’s translated all too literally, or were the beef chunks trembled with fear? I’d feel pretty shook up too if I were brined, pierced with a skewer, and turned side to side like crazy on a hot grill. Great meat, flavorful onion and bell pepper. The red rice looks inviting but resides on the plain side, as gac gives only color but little taste.

Entree 2: bò cuộn tôm nướng (grilled beef-rolled shrimp). Don’t you just love how the chargrilled red meat and seafood are balanced with pickled carrots and daikon, cucumber, tomatoes, and a cup of fluffy white rice sitting neatly on two curly lettuce leaves? A little bit of crushed peanuts and chopped scallions for boost, although the beef rolls are quite brackish themselves. Notice there are 5 shrimps.

Entree 3: bò lá lốt (grilled ground beef wrapped in lolot leaves). Instead of using grape leaves like the Persians, the Laotians and the Vietnamese wrap their meat in the tangy, somewhat bitter lolot leaves. Like champagne, it might not taste amazing to an objective thinker, but it’s popular. Something that a good authentic Vietnamese restaurant has for the ones in need of a reminder of a taste at home.

Enjoy our lunch we did. A good looking restaurant with tender price.

Address: Lemon Grass Vietnamese & French Cuisine
1143 Story Road, San Jose, CA 95122

Recall: First time at Lemon Grass

The nice thing about Berkeley is it’s about an hour away from San Jose, where Little Saigon is with all the good old Vietnamese food. The sad thing is Berkeley is *cluttered*, no space for parking, hence it’s impractical to have a car, hence if you want to go to San Jose, you can either get on and off five buses for a decent cost and risk missing your stops, or get a zipcar and have to bite your nails over how many hours you should spend hunting for food at the expense of the car, or quickly get over 25 years of age and rent a car at the local Enterprise, Hertz, and the like. Or hope that a friend with a car likes you and Vietnamese food enough to make the drive.

Because one Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ mysteriously didn’t exist where Google Maps say it is, and another was closed, we ventured to Lemon Grass on Story Road for a Vietnamese lunch. It looks nice on the outside, and the inside too. I would go as far as saying this is how I’d like a Vietnamese restaurant to look, a notch above the common phở houses. Yelp’s reviewers don’t seem to approve of it, but arguably for the wrong reason. Yes, the service was slow, but the food was good. When rating a restaurant, food quality comes first. Just look how the lady immersed herself in the sensation of the hot pot.

We ordered bánh cuốn hồ Tây and cơm sườn nướng (rice grilled pork chop). The bánh cuốn turned out to be no bánh cuốn…

… just layers of soft rice sheets, eaten with nuoc mam pha, cha lua, and sprinkles of fried shallot. It’s bánh ướt (“wet banh”), no more, no less. If you’re interested in meat, don’t order it. Even though the shrimp tempura is good.

Order cơm sườn nướng instead! So, this could just be my craving for meat in an almost meatless, vegetarian, health conscious city where you can’t find a steak house, but this was the best grilled pork chop I’ve had in years! Sweet, salty, marinated, juicy, charred, aromatic, the flavor seeps throughout the meat. It’s not one of those huge chunk of pork you get at a supposedly upscale diner that only looks good on the outside but tastes like hay on the inside. If I didn’t have to retain some dignity in front of strangers, I’d have picked the bone.

Address: Lemon Grass Vietnamese & French Cuisine
1143 Story Road, San Jose, CA 95122

Update: more food during Second time at Lemon Grass