![]() ![]() Slices of Vietnamese ham ( chả lụa) and fried shallots on top. No written bills, everything is verbal and cash-only □īánh Cuốn ($9), steamed rice rolls with ground pork and shrimp filling. The woman speaks northern Vietnamese and presumably no English. On this visit, it was the elderly woman running the place with a younger assistant. We also tried their Bún Riêu (pork and crab paste rice vermicelli soup). We got their Bánh Cuốn with ground pork and shrimp filling. You can also get bánh cuốn to go, in either full or half orders. The menu is basically two items: Vietnamese steamed rice rolls (with or without filling), and three variations of the same general kind of soup noodle. That’s a nice crawl without having to leave the strip mall… To the right is a wonderful sketchy massage place and a weed shop. (It helps that Pho Hoa generally sucks and has a different menu.) Mainly known as the place to get Vietnamese Steamed Rolls ( bánh cuốn), Thanh Xuân Cafe on Kingsway and Nanaimo seems like it’s been there forever, despite being beside the long-standing Pho Hoa and still staying in business. ![]() This won’t take long (but maybe longer than you think). I owe you.This hole-in-the-wall has ~14 seats and just two main items on the menu. So many freakishly fresh strawberries that, towards the end, the straw must be pitched in favor of a long-handled spoon. Not only fresh, it’s filled with chopped strawberries. Go the extra 99 cents for the strawberry lemonade. There’s a very flavorful “dac biet” house chicken that pops up among the “com” (rice) dishes and vermicelli offerings. ![]() Splash some sweet chili sauce on top, twist the ends, bite down and weep in delight. Then pile on some of the mountain of ultracrisp cilantro, mint, cucumber, basil and lettuce from the accompanying side plate. For two: four skewers of nem nuong-the ground pork-a couple of chaws of raw pickled pork (significantly better tasting than its description), a pile of pickled carrot squiggles, daikon slivers, miniature vermicelli bathmats and a passel of cheroot-sized egg rolls. There’s a marmalade-esque orange dipping sauce and panoply of possibilities. This would be a fun meal on a date-$13.99 for two, $7.99 to go solo. First, transform the rice paper from plastic Frisbees into moist edibility by submerging them in a bowl of hot water. ![]() Its calling card is dac biet nem nuong: special ground pork spring rolls. And that’s not even Quan Nem Ninh Hoa’s signature dish. Throwing in the jalapeño pieces and sprouts from the side plate, a couple lime wedges and a dollop of fiery red-chili salsa creates a monstrously enthralling meal far greater than the sum of its parts. There’s a bit of pickled raw pork, scallions, pork blood, white onion slivers, a thumb-sized hard-boiled egg, squid, shards of this, pinches of that. Lurking in the broth’s depths is a small crab claw. The menu says it includes pork, pork liver, poached shrimp, sautéed ground pork and opaque noodles. I buy that-and gladly would again.įreely translated, this is the “everything but the kitchen sink” soup. The menu adds the words “dac biet,” but all that means is “special.” The menu also says this broth is cooked for hours to reach perfection. Popular in both the south and central part of Vietnam, hu tieu Nam Vang is a steal of a meal at $7.59. Several central Vietnam dishes begin with the word “Hue” to show they originated in Hue, the Nguyen Dynasty’s capital from 1802 to 1945. That’s one reason the food of central Vietnam has oodles of side dishes like banh beo-the more plates on the table, the greater the economic status of the host. The cooking of the royal court of the Nguyen Dynasty is a major influence. In the south, the French imperialists tossed their culinary joie de vivre into the cook pot.īut in central Vietnam, dishes are spicier. Briefly: North Vietnamese cooking, which begat pho and banh cuon, is influenced by China. Its name says it offers food from Ninh Hoa, a district in the Khanh Hoa province in south central Vietnam. And while not a lot of the tan wood tables in the warm, earth-toned restaurant are filled at 1 p.m., several add credibility to the menu’s claim and contain families with little kiddos gabbing and gobbling up goodies, like the little dishes of banh beo-teensy rice pancakes mounded with ground shrimp, scallions and what look like fried shallots.Īlso endearing is the restaurant’s truth in advertising. There’s something downright Rockwellian about the matriarch and her daughter or niece kibitzing behind the kitchen counter while doing prep work for the evening traffic. It says right upfront on the menu that the restaurant, south of 47th Street at 6450 Stockton Boulevard, is “family operated and family environment.” Of course, my editor sent me there, but that in no way diminishes the delight. One of the most joyful parts of this job is discovering places like Quan Nem Ninh Hoa. ![]()
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