Flavor Boulevard

Ever wonder why Banh Cuon Tay Ho has the best steamed roll of all places? Thin like a veil, never too chewy or oily, the flour never tastes sour, and the mixed fish sauce never has the bitter hint of lime. Their secrets are mysteries to me. By chance, the Lưu family who operates Tay Ho 18 in Houston stumbled on my blog post of 4 years ago and invited me to the opening week after the relocation early April, which would feature a new item: crawfish banh cuon. I couldn’t come then due to a minor distraction called school, but a month later the place is stilled packed to the rim like an Apple store the day of a new iPhone release. I managed to snatch Mr. James Lưu aside for a brief chat during lunch rush, wonder if his staff liked me or hated me for it.

Leaving Vietnam in ’79, getting attacked by pirates, rescued ashore but later tricked and stranded by the natives in the Malaysian jungle, rescued by an American helicpopter after a month in the jungle, immigrated to the US as an orphan (Mr. Lưu was then 16 years old, any child refugee under 18 without parent supervision was categorized as an orphan in US immigration rules), living with foster parents in New York until the age of 18, moving out to California to be independent, studying and later working as a legal administrator for many years, Mr. Lưu’s life journey had all the drama to constitute a movie. In 2007, the Lưu family moved from Southern California to Houston, and after surveying the restaurant scene, Mr. Lưu set up his steamed roll business as part of the Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ franchise.

Last time I came, the restaurant stood inside the Hong Kong Market (HKM) complex, but according to Mr. Lưu, because the main patronage was customers of the market, the number peaked at lunch time and on the weekends but stayed flaccid otherwise, they closed at 7 pm, parking was difficult (the HKM parking lot is always crowded), and “it didn’t really feel like a restaurant”. At the end of the 3-year contract, he moved out next to Kim Son this spring, and business takes off.

The new crawfish banh cuon, accompanied by a special terracotta butter sauce with a zing, receives warm attention, but the Number 1 special combo, bánh cuốn đặc biệt, remains the most popular choice among the patrons because it has a bit of everything: some porky rolls (bánh cuốn nhân thịt), some flat rolls with shrimp flakes (bánh cuốn tôm chấy), some old-styled Thanh Trì sheet noodle (bánh ướt) to eat with the sausage, a hefty shrimp-and-sweet-potato deep-fried. But just between you and me, I told Mr. Lưu that I’m loyal to Number 7 – bánh cuốn nhân thịt, that has everything Number 1 has except the banh uot, and he laughed in agreement.

FB: Your menu spans all popular dishes of the 3 regions, with rice, bun, and noodle soups. Why don’t you limit it to only the rolls, the way specialty eating establishments in Vietnam limit to one or two dishes and their names become practically synonymous with the dish? After all, Tây Hồ is known for bánh cuốn like Ánh Hồng for 7-course beef or 46A Đinh Công Tráng St. for sizzling crepes…
Mr. Lưu: It’s precisely because we’re known for banh cuon that we have to have other dishes too. If we had only banh cuon, it’d be sold out by 2, then we’d have to apologize to the later customers and people would ask how come a banh cuon place doesn’t have banh cuon. Besides, everyone in a family would like something different and we’d want to accomodate that.
FB: So you make your batter fresh everyday? You don’t have some in storage in case of sold-outs?
Mr. Lưu: Yes and no. The batter is made daily and processed for a few days before it’s ready, so it’s not like we can make it on the spot.
FB: Is that the secret to your quality? Can you reveal a little more? *puppy eyes of Puss-in-Boots*
Mr. Lưu: Well, I can’t tell you the exact proportion, but the water for the mixed flour is changed daily in a fermentation period. Tay Ho standard requires the batter to be used between 3-7 days after the first mix.
FB: So that’s why the rolls taste a bit sour at some places, they left their batter sit too long?
Mr. Lưu: Yes, longer than 7 days would result in a sour batter. But shorter than 3 days and your rolls would fall apart, you need the fermentation to give the sheet its elasticity. Actually here we only use 5- to 6-day-old batter to render the right chew.
FB: What about the fish sauce?
Mr. Lưu: Can’t tell you that. *grin* The two deciding factors in a plate of steamed rolls are the fish sauce and the batter, and I make them both myself everyday. There’s a lot to balance between taste and cost, the quality of pure fish sauce you put in, the kind of water to mix. You want it to taste sweet and fresh, and you don’t want the bitterness from the lime. We also avoid using MSG.
FB: So I just have to buy your fish sauce then *grin*
Mr. Lưu: *grin* Yes, we do have mixed fish sauce for sale, and it stays good for a month in the fridge.

Between fragments of our conversation, Mr. Lưu was also waving at customers, directing his staff, printing the checks and exchanging handshakes with the regulars. The lunch rush was a spectacular sight. I thanked him for the meal and the conversation; had I lived closer, I’d relive my middle school dream: a plate of porky steamed rolls everyday for breakfast.

Address: Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ 18
10613 Bellaire Blvd. #A168
Houston, TX 77072
(281) 495-8346

Not many Vietnamese diners roll out steamed rice leaves stuffed with pork and mushroom, and among those that do, not many actually do it right. A good roll of banh cuon must be slick but not oily, delicate but not crumbly, the flour leaf thin but springy, the stuffing visible, almost poking through, on one side and hidden on the other, served warm. A good nuoc cham must be more sweet than salty, with a little zest of lime, and spicy is not necessary. You then pour as much of that honey-colored dipping sauce as you want all over the plate, soaking the cucumber, the bean sprout, the cha lua, and especially the rolls. You then savour. When it comes to banh cuon, Tay Ho rules, from Vietnam to America. But among the Tay Ho’s of the Bay, Tay Ho #9 in Oakland makes it best.

After taking over the business from her aunt, Duyên transforms Tay Ho Oakland into an all-American restaurant with fluent-English-speaking staff (herself on weekdays and with another girl on weekends), attentive service, credit card accepting, and a list of common herbs on the last page of the menu, something I haven’t seen at any other Vietnamese restaurant. It helps me at least, finally after 24 years I know which name goes with which plant. (Click on image for full-sized version). The food authenticity, of course, is preserved.

The menu features four types of banh cuon. The first, order #8, is the definitive authentic unadulterated version of steamed rolls that the Northerners had created and the whole country has fallen in love with: bánh cuốn nhân thịt (steamed rolls with meat). The more I eat it the more I crave it. The best part: flat, slick, crunchy pieces of wood-ear mushroom that accidentally fall out of the rolls.

The second type of banh cuon, for non-meat-lovers like my mother, is bánh cuốn tôm chấy (rolls with dry-fried shrimp). The shrimps, peeled and fried without oil or any liquid, get dried up and broken into a flossy powdery entanglement. That’s if you make it at home. Here I suspect the kitchen uses some prepackaged shrimp powder for efficiency, which has a beautiful scarlet hue but little texture and flavor. The rolls, though practically just steamed rice leaves, are still savourastic when soaked and glossed in that honey-colored sweet and salty nước chấm.

The third type is a modern spinoff with thicker rice leaf, bigger rolls, stockier stuffing that features grilled pork, bean sprout, and cucumber all in one, also at a heftier price (4 rolls for $6.95). Bánh cuốn thịt nướng is more of a filler than a delighter, but who says it can’t lift your mood while settling your stomach. Instead of grilled pork, shredded pork skin is also used, making the fourth type: bánh cuốn bì.

If banh cuon thit nuong‘s savoriness from grilled pork saves it from getting drowned in nuoc cham, the shredded pork skin (with some meat) in banh cuon bi are merely for textural pleasure, leaving chilipeppered peanut sauce to dress up the rolls. I have faith that nuoc cham would be a better roll-dresser though.

Occasionally I like to fool around with these variations, but in the end banh cuon nhan thit is still the winner in taste, just as Tay Ho Oakland is the winner in reliability.

Address: Tây Hồ Restaurant – Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ #9
344B 12th Street
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 836-6388

The revamped Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ #8 dishes out some seriously tender thịt kho (fatty pork slow cooked in nuoc mam and sugar).

You know how they say this beef and that melt in your mouth? Well, I haven’t had any beef like that to testify if it’s just figurative talks, but last week I had this pork that really did melt in my mouth.

There is no need for either knife or teeth. The porcelain soup spoon cuts through three layers of skin, fat and meat as it would with a flan. The skin, which is half an inch thick and might have been chewy once, is not even as tough as jello. There is perhaps too much fat in this pork: a runny white bunch flimsily holding onto the meat (which should have been trimmed off) and bubbles floating in the sauce.

That’s how Southerners in the Mekong Delta cook their meat: huge chunks, generous seasonings, little attention to details and presentation. A few spoons of meat sauce alone is enough to flavor the rice. Overwhelmed by the fat? Tone it down with some dưa chua, pickled bok choy, carrot and daikon.

But what I like most in this lardy, homely course is not the meat, it’s the bone. Soaked in the same mixture of fish sauce and sugar, cooked for the same long time over the same heat, the bone doesn’t just dissolve like the meat, but becomes a pocket of juicy marrow. Place a bone between your jaws and press with the molars, the marrow oozes out like melting chocolate. Moving up a notch, Tay Ho’s braised pork was so cooked the bones turned into cookies. I am not exaggerating.

The second best thing in thịt kho is the eggs that have been cooked with the meat. Most savory eggs you can ever get.

Address: Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ #8
2895 Senter Rd
San Jose, CA 95111
(408) 629-5229

Thịt kho trứng: $

Their bánh cuốn, as always, are good, but you have to pay $6.25 for only five rolls at Tây Hồ #8, whereas eight rolls of the same size would cost you $5.50 at Tây Hồ #9 in Oakland.

I have discovered another great soup. My fingers trembled with anticipation over the sweet aroma, the shining aurulent broth, those fragile fatty bubbles that form a thin film on the surface, the promising dapple of fried shallot,… and the pictures got all blurry. So just squint your eyes and pretend for the moment that you’re hunching over a bowl of piping hot succulence and the steam makes your eyes hazy. Can you smell that sweet aroma? No? Grab a chair at Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ #9 in North Oakland, ask for a bowl of bún mộc, and find out for yourself.

Before diving thy chopsticks into the noodle soup, let us start with the name. It can be spelled either bún mọc or bún mộc, the hat on the “o” changes the word’s meaning and thus the name’s origin, but nobody is certain which one is correct. “Mộc” means “simple”, the broth is simply boiling water savorized by salt, pepper, nuoc mam, pork, shiitake, and wood ear mushroom.  “Mộc” also means pork paste (twice-ground or pounded pork, seasoned, known as “giò sống” in Vietnamese), which is the central ingredient in the original soup but not in the rendition at Tay Ho #9. I like gio song, but sliced meatballs and cha lua (silk sausage) make a trustworthy substitution. The cook here also threw in some shredded chicken breast as a reassurance of familiar fixings. Now if you drop the hat on the “o”, “Mọc” is the nickname of the former village Nhân Mục, a part of west Hanoi today. This village can very well be the hometown of the meat-laden rice noodle soup, hence the noodle soup’s name. However the spelling goes, all we southerners know is bun moc comes from the north and is less than popular in Saigon. Most Vietnamese immigrants in the Star Flag States are southerners, so bun moc is even harder to find on the menus here. But as long as there’s a kitchen somewhere churning out these mouth-warming, bellicious bowls, there will be my pair of chopsticks eager for a hearty winter fling.

In the mood for something a little more adventurous?

If bun moc might seem on the mild side, you know, ground pork and white meat, and healthy mushroom for crying out loud, then bun bo Hue would spice up the buds. Bun bo Hue is synonymous with chili paste and satay, there’s just no way out of the heat. There’s no way out of the brutal assortment either, beef chunks, gelatinous cubes of congealed pork blood, some hasty slanted cuts of pig trotter. The blood cube doesn’t taste bloody though, it’s rather bland (naturally, it’s cooked and unseasoned) and only for textural purposes. I’ve sampled this beef noodle soup at Kim Son and Bun Bo Hue Co Do, but third time is indeed a charm, I enjoyed it at Tay Ho. Either that or the hostess’s friendliness, a rare delight to diners in Vietnamese restaurants, which alone makes me want to go back to this place.

1 bún bò Huế + 1 bún mọc + 1 large bánh cuốn to-go for lunch the next day: $22.67

Address: Tây Hồ Restaurant – Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ #9
344B 12th Street
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 836-6388

More on Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ: Tây Hồ #8 in San Jose and Tây Hồ #18 in Bellaire, Houston.

Also check out Bánh Cuốn Hoa II in Houston, they have nice duck noodle soup (bún măng vịt).

My roommate is eating dinner, I haven’t had anything since 9am, and I’ve vowed to stay on this chair until I get a plot to show my advisor, so I can’t grab anything to eat yet (except the cookies within reach). The best solution to satisfy the saddened tummy is to blog about food. Above is a bottle of nuoc mam pha, and a jar of chilly sauce if you’re in the mood for crying.

We come here frequently when I’m in Houston. It’s Banh Cuon Tay Ho #18, belonging to the franchise Banh Cuon Tay Ho (but apparently not on the website, which is good, because the website, oddly enough, is quite Chinese influenced, when banh cuon is as Vietnamese as it can get). I’ve blogged about this chain before, in San Jose, but the restaurant in Houston is quite different. It’s a lot more spacious (you don’t have to worry about accidentally flicking your chopstick, or worse, nuoc mam, over to the other table). In all fairness, it’s Texas. You can’t blame California for being mostly inhabitable. It’s also a lot less Vietnamese-looking, minus the fact that the staff and all customers are Vietnamese. Nicer tables, less noisy, doesn’t have the smell of food, doesn’t have a TV with some beauty contest going on. Anyway, just go to the one in San Jose, then come here, then you’ll like it here better.

Asians like fish, don’t they? I never understand why…

Most of the time I get the to-go box. It’s just more comfortable slurping at home. The plastic box may look flimsy, but I admire it for not spilling out anything during the long drive (with various sudden hitting-the-brake instants).

Three pieces of shrimp tempura, a lone deep-fried shrimp (recall there was no such thing at the San Jose place), a small cup of nuoc mam pha, a bag of quick-boiled bean sprouts and greens whose names I have no clue, slices of cha lua (the ones with yellow curd are cha chien, or fried cha lua). Digging through the jungle, and the heart of goodness is…

…5 rolls of banh cuon. Five! Who can be full after 5 rolls of steamed carbon paper thin rice flour sheet gently stuffed with ground pork and finely chopped wood-ear mushroom? Each was just a little longer than my index finger. They’d make nice body pillows for a mouse. I dipped the rolls into the nuoc mam and they went down too quickly. Perhaps 10 rolls would have sufficed. (That’s why it’s breakfast food in Vietnam.) But making these flimsy pieces of woot requires a bit of skill. With a little less than $6 (cash only), it is a much healthier, more customer-cared meal than a burger or the bully version of a roll, a burrito. The wait was also fairly quick.

Address: Banh Cuon Tay Ho #18 (inside Hong Kong Mall, near Ocean Palace)
11209 Bellaire Blvd
Houston, TX 77072

It’s always interesting to read reviews online. A good place always has some reviews that smash them down mercilessly as if all those reviewers were served was a piece of wood with splinters and a side of mud. One thing people should keep in mind when they go to Vietnamese restaurants: order the house specialties. It’s in their name. It’s something they started out with and have earned a living from. It’s what they know best. It’s the difference between an authentic Vietnamese restaurant and a mass-production Chinese buffet. Try something else on the menu only if the specialty satisfies you, and if you want to be adventurous, well, keep your complaints to yourself. Adventures rarely bring satisfaction.

If you ate at Banh Cuon Tay Ho in Bellaire, Houston before, Banh Cuon Tay Ho in San Jose will satisfy your craving, but will not give you the oomph and aaahhhh. Small tables under a small roof, equipped with the usual tray of bottles of rooster chili sauce, soy sauce, some other kind of chili sauce I’m not sure if my tongue would allow me to try, and a huge bottle/vase of nuoc mam mixed with sugar, lime juice, water, and a moderate amount of chili pepper. Pictured above is the house specialty: banh cuon nhan thit (rice rolls stuffed with ground pork and minced wood ear mushroom), served on flowery melamine plate, with bean sprout and sliced cucumber for the bedding, one piece of unknown tempura, and 5 thin slices of cha lua. (Now if you had it in Bellaire, you’d have gotten 3 pieces of shrimp tempura.) Nonetheless it is good.

Also ordered is a serving of banh cuon thit nuong (banh cuon with barbecued pork stuffing). No bean sprout visible on the plate, no cucumber, lots of cilantro and fried shallots atop.

Embarrassingly I must admit I did toss a chunk of the banh cuon roll into the spoon of nuoc mam then into my mouth before I remembered to take a picture. It was very good. Bean sprouts were inside the rolls, so no funky chopstick pickups required. The meat was well seasoned enough that you don’t really need a pool of nuoc mam to buff up the taste. I’ll remember to order it again when I go to Banh Cuon Tay Ho in Bellaire, for comparison.
The TV in the small corner was speaking in Vietnamese. The people around us were speaking in Vietnamese. The waiters were speaking to us half in Vietnamese and half in English. Minus the food carts and woven baskets of goodies on the streets, it’s just so Vietnamese in San Jose.
Lunch for two plus tip was $16.
One more thing, Vietnamese restaurants don’t like to have a website for themselves, and if they do, it doesn’t seem very well updated. Either that, or the Banh Cuon Tay Ho #18 in Bellaire isn’t part of the corporation. And what’s up with the Chinese characters?

Address: Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ #8
2895 Senter Rd
San Jose, CA 95111
(408) 629-5229