Flavor Boulevard

Among the countable Vietnamese restaurant owners that ever bother to make their menus available on the web, Kim Châu and her husband put together quite a decent site for their Red Pier: black background, colorful foods, dazzling images of the bar and the walls, names and prices of 166 dishes minus dessert. Red Pier is a go-to when you work in the ‘hood, have an hour for lunch, and just want some normal noodle soup or vermicelli at a reasonable price. Or when you crave something sweet and cold and nutty, like a chè ba màu (trichromatic bean and tapioca ice).

Don’t drive too fast down the one-way Milam, you’d miss the restaurant for sure. It took us a few loops around until we pulled into the right parking lot, just across the street from the proprietors’ other business, Kim Châu Jewelers, on the left side. Also, don’t order Cơm Tôm Rim (rice with caramelized shrimp), unless you’re having salt-deficiency. If you must, Chè Ba Màu proves to be a comforting three-buck companion.

Do order #1: Gỏi Sứa Tôm Thịt (jellyfish salad with shrimp and pork), the only setback is its chilipepper overload, which I’m sure you can ask the cook to take it down a few notches. The thinly sliced  jellyfish blends rather too well with carrots and cucumber strings you’d have to look to notice its cold, clean elastic crunch. Gỏi Sứa Tôm Thịt is one of the house specials that Red Pier emphasizes on their TV advertisement, and combined with large shrimp crackers it’s certainly a better execution of jellyfish than duck tongue and jelly fish at Chinese dim sum halls.

Do order #2: Mì Xá Xíu (char siu egg noodle soup). This is a cheap (only $6.25) and satisfying deal. It’s slightly more involved than Wiki Wiki’s saimin bowl, with crispy green onions and a meaty sweet broth.

Do order #3: the classic cold rice vermicelli (Bún) with the not so classic grilled beef (Bò Nướng), certainly bathed in nước mắm and garnished with chopped green onion seasoned in lard (mỡ hành), crushed peanuts, fried shallots, pickled carrots and daikon. For the greens lovers there’s that hidden pile of bean sprouts and shredded cucumber at the bottom, whose texture matches that of neither bún nor beef. (Now that I think of it, bibim nangmyeon also has bean sprout and cucumber, so it must be a cold noodle thing.)

Overall, Little Mom found the place less than pristine as the stir-fry smell sweeps over the metallic kitchen counter into the dining area. Red Pier’s chefs also take a tad too much liberty with the seasonings. But not all Vietnamese restaurants have jellyfish salad and friendly service, and usually the ones with 166 items on their menu don’t execute any of them too well, so I’d give Red Pier a B if the red-and-ebony dining box were a student in my class.

Address: Red Pier Vietnamese Restaurant
2704 Milam St
Ste C
Houston, TX 77006
theredpier.com
(713) 807-7726
(information from der Miller: Red Pier and Les Givral’s Sandwiches are sister businesses, both on Milam St.)

Lunch for 3:
Medium jellyfish salad (9.95) + grilled beef vermicelli (6.95) + rice & caramelized shrimp (7.75) + char siu noodle soup (6.25) + bean & tapioca ice (3.00) + tax
= $36.70

If I had to pick one Vietnamese dish made from rice flour and eat it everyday for the rest of my life (whole grain white rice doesn’t count), then bánh cuốn would be it. These rolls of thin rice sheet, filled with minced pork and woodear mushroom, gently dipped in nước mắm, make the perfect warm breakfast, light lunch, and quirky dinner. The question is where to find them. Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ tops the chart everywhere from Texas to Cali, but does Bánh Cuốn Hoa II come close? Maybe rival? Miss by a long shot?

I cheated a bit at the beginning. The first picture isn’t bánh cuốn, but bánh bèo, a rice flour spinoff drafted in the shape and size of waterferns, hence its name. Flooded with nước mắm, they make great appetizers while we were waiting for bánh cuốn.

Bánh bèo comes with a few toppings: fried shallot, chopped green onions, and tôm chấy (dry fried shrimp). The tôm chấy I usually have are totally desiccant, ranging anywhere between flaky and powdery, but these (I’m guessing homemade) shrimps are still plump, and more sweet than salty. It’s not a bad twist from the usual though. The flour part is a bit tired, they broke easily into pieces the moment my chopsticks pinched them. Bánh Hỏi Châu Đốc does it better.

Because it is very hard to go wrong with grilled meat, it’s always safe to get bún thịt nướng on first try at a new restaurant, also a friendly choice for those who have not had Vietnamese cooking before, want to try, but are still cautious. There’s no weird stuff, just rice noodle, crushed peanuts, vegetable and honest grilled pork. Nước mắm seasoned with a tidbit chili paste, a lot of sugar, and a squeeze of lemon juice would spike the taste to infinite pleasure. Bánh Cuốn Hoa II nailed it with a supertender juicy marinated pork.

As much as my dad is a fan of grilled meat, my mom is loyal to noodle soups. She ordered bún măng vịt (vermicelli soup with duck and bamboo shoot), which actually comes in two parts: the duck salad (gỏi vịt) and the bamboo shoot soup (bún măng) with no duck. Dunk the duck into the soup and you get duck soup :-).

The broth is quite pure and slender, free of fatty bubbles floating on the surface, not as heavily seasoned as pho or hu tiu broth, simply refreshing. As for the bamboo shoots, there were both the fresh kind and the re-hydrated dried kind. The dried kind is a tad firmer and more squid-like than the fresh kind. A lovely texture. Boiled duck is also very tender and flavorful.

Bánh Cuốn Hoa II has a pretty clean look. Varnished wooden chairs and tables, high ceiling, humble paintings of Vietnamese countryside sceneries on the walls. I took a peek into their kitchen to capture the banh cuon production line.

Clockwise from bottom left: 1. stirring the liquid batter (rice flour with water); 2. spreading a laddle of batter on a hot flat surface; 3. making a roll; 4. 3 kinds of final products: normal bánh cuốn (with minced pork and mushroom), bánh cuốn tôm chấy (dry fried shrimp), and bánh cuốn thịt nướng (grilled pork).

The lady was just too fast for my camera, I missed capturing the crucial step where she gently used a long chopstick to take the thin rice veil off the cooking surface and whip it aside for the rolling chef.

So here it is, the restaurant’s signature plate: bánh cuốn topped with cha lua, bean sprouts, greens, and fried shallots. The filling is good. The sheet is thin and not oily. But the flour has a sour hint. Bánh Cuốn Tây Hồ is still the champion of bánh cuốn.

Price: a very reasonable lunch for 3:
1 bánh bèo + 1 bún thịt nướng + 1 bún măng vịt + 1 bánh cuốn = $24.57

Address: Banh cuon Hoa II
11169 Beechnut St. #K
Houston, TX 77072

Take a look at RavenousCouple’s recipe for bún măng vịt, it’s my new fav noodle soup.

Update: the amazing pictures and recipe for homemade banh cuon, also from RavenousCouple.

It’s almost certain that outside the big Vietnamese communities any Vietnamese restaurant you see in America has the word pho in it. People must eventually have the impression that Vietnamese eat nothing but rice noodle soup. Of course, Japanese eat nothing but sushi and Americans have only hamburgers.

Mudpie found this place earlier in Los Altos, about 10-15 minutes car ride from SLAC. We strayed from the usual pho and ordered a gargantuan set of appetizers and main courses. Starting off was the familiar goi cuon, a salad wrap with some lettuce or garden herbs, some halved shrimps (mainly for decoration), a razor blade thin slice of boiled pork, some fresh bean sprout, and a little bundle of rice vermicelli. I took a bite by itself, and the meat couldn’t quite buff the plain veggie up, so a dip into the peanut sauce nearby was essential. It was a very light appetizer, and no matter how slowly you go you’re gonna finish the roll in at most 3 minutes. I don’t know what kind of sauce they serve with in Vietnam, but the peanut sauce here is just really good.

Next came the supposedly called cha gio (stated “in rice paper” on the menu). As I had lived in Vietnam for 17 years I believe I’m qualified to judge whether a roll of cha gio is actually made of rice paper (banh trang) or the fooling wheat sheet that makes the Vietnamese cha gio synonymous with the Chinese egg roll. So here goes: “rice paper” my foot. It’s not any more rice paper than the average mediocre egg roll you find at any Chinese buffet. Can you ever find a real cha gio in America anymore? I’d give them some credit for trying: the wrapper is indeed thin. But rice paper is translucent, this is as opaque as Venus’ atmosphere. Good egg roll, but honestly, I feel cheated.

Pictured above is goi ngo sen tom thit (lotus stem salad with shrimp and pork), which appeared suspiciously in the appetizer section, since we both ate some and even took the rest home for another meal. One thing to be noticed is Vietnamese salad is nothing like our usual American garden salad or Caesar salad. The waiter is not going to ask you what kind of dressing you’d like, and you need not innocuously remind “on the side, please”. There is no reason to fret over some little Ranch or bleu cheese dressing that will cause your calorie level to shoot up, or vinaigrette to make your taste buds sour. The salad is simply soaked in a mixture of salt, lemon juice, and sugar. Every piece of lotus stem, sliced carrot, sliced onion, cilantro, even the thin slices of boiled pork and the shrimp halves, has almost the same taste of that mixture, thoroughly and evenly. The lotus stem is a little crunchy, the pork is tender and mild, but not plain in the least, topped with crushed peanuts for some nuttiness. The salad is a meal in itself, so simple and elegant. And healthy.

But we didn’t stay healthy for long. For main course we had com tay cam (English name: clay pot) and old timer bun thit nuong (cold rice vermicelli with grilled pork).

The rice came with a small cup of pho broth, which I’m not sure what to do with. I’m pretty sure the rice wasn’t cooked in the pot, only served in it, because the pot wasn’t hot and the rice was almost flaming. The first spoon was excellent, the second revealed that it’s a rather oily combination of fried rice, fried shiitake mushroom, fried Chinese sausage, and fried chicken. The pot could be smaller than your cereal bowl, but it’s like the pot of Thach Sanh, it’s so filling you keep eating layer after layer but you just can’t finish it in one sitting.

Now this had been my craving for a long time. A bowl of chargrilled pork chops atop a soft bed of bún, some bean sprout and sliced cucumber at the bottom for a taste of freshness, sprinkled crushed peanuts and many a spoonful of nuoc mam pha (fish extract diluted in water, mixed with lemon juice, salt and sugar, and very little chopped garlic). I like the bun, the nuoc mam, and the veggie, but I would whisper *just* a little disappointment with the pork. It was definitely flavorful, but it was too thinly sliced. It wasn’t grilled long enough to bring out all the flavor. And it’s a little, just a little, dry. Beside, how are you supposed to cut that monstrously wide sheet of meat with chopsticks?

This is the closest one could get to Vietnamese food from Palo Alto, and unarguably a good find (a decent one, if you’re uncompromisingly picky about real cha gio). It’s cheap and takes credit card. We didn’t have to wait long for our food to arrive, but if you expect attentive service coming to ask “Is everything okay?” and refill your water every 10 minutes, don’t come here. Vietnamese restaurants respect privacy of their customers, so no need to worry about putting food in your mouth the correct way (as there is none). The only thing that bothered me about this place was the chatty nature of the hostesses. When the restaurant wasn’t packed after prime lunch time, our ladies comfortably spilled out to each other, across the counter and tables in Vietnamese with heavy Southern accent, numerous pieces about friends and relatives. Not that many could understand them, but some background music would be more pleasant I think. See menu.

Phở Vỉ Hoa Restaurant
4546 El Camino Real Suite A12
Los Altos, CA 94022
Lunch for two: $21.81