Vietnam Restaurant is wedged into a rectangular complex along with Riverside Glass and the Pearl Street Pub at 137 Pearl Street in Essex Junction. I had passed the unassuming eatery on a number of occasions, but the only thing about it that I really noticed was its simple yet elegant sign, which proclaims in bold uppercase red letters on a white plastic background: VIETNAM RESTAURANT.
Before I had discovered the wonders of Vietnamese cuisine, the sign could have said “Equestrian Shoeshine” or “Christian Science Reading Room” for all it mattered to me. It was just another sign announcing the existence of just another shop on one of Rte. 15’s most strip-mall-glutted stretches. But that was before I had ever wandered into the world of Vietnamese food, a world lush with verdant fronds of cilantro and basil, a world peppered with briny fish sauce, tangy tamarinds, and searing chilis, a world in which the delicacies of a cow or a pig’s body seemed to multiply endlessly, as if our American palate had all but neglected the hidden treasures of our slaughtered livestock.
After returning from a summer in New York City, where I first delved into the flavors of Vietnamese cookery, those red letters took on a whole new import. They branded themselves into the nether-reaches of my mind, until even my dreams were suffused with their burning crimson elegance and all of the tastes that they intimated. So, on a cold November Saturday, I headed out to Essex with some good friends to check out precisely what this aptly-named eatery could offer my palate.
Upon entering Vietnam Restaurant, one is struck by….well, one is struck by the absence of anything striking. No music. Oft-white and blue tiled floors. A scent, quite pleasant to be sure, but mild and indeterminable. The walls are a faded salmon pink, adorned with a handful of tzotchkes ranging in sophistication from the sublime (a framed poster of Ha Long Bay displaying a giant limestone monolith reflected in aquamarine waters) to the tawdry (an unframed poster of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline complete with red and green electric lights). One third of the wall-hangings are accounted for by two different varieties of “No Smoking” signs. The tables and chairs are the standard fare for those who prefer to dine in at a take-out joint.
In short, it looks like the kind of restaurant where dishes are ordered by their number rather than their phonetically alien names. And it is. A perusal of the menu shows 53 items accompanied by brief descriptions and full-color photographic illustrations, which simplifies ordering for those of us who don’t know bun cha gio from banh mi. Nevertheless, ordering was difficult. Most of my experiences with Vietnamese food have included the popular beef-broth soup called pho, and since I never tire of the dish and find it exemplary of a restaurant’s overall quality, I decided on that. But, with six varieties of pho to choose from in quantities of either large or small, what do I order? Each pho contains the same broth with long, thin rice noodles, cilantro, slivers of onion, scallions, and a variety of meats. The only real question in deciding upon a pho is which animal does one want to eat, which parts of said animal is one willing to consume, and how cooked or uncooked does one want it? Pho tai gan sach features rare beef and soft tendons. Pho tai chin nan includes rare beef, tripe, and well done flanks. Pho ga is the chicken variation of this usually beef-centered dish.
Decisions, decisions. Ultimately, I went with the pho dac biet, the “Special Soup” as the English translation went, a veritable celebration of cow. This includes the whole shebang: rare beef, beef balls, soft tendons, tripe, and well-done flanks. Why not? One is only given so many culinary opportunities to honor the offal and fibrous connective tissue in one’s praise-singing gustatory juices. Enough with wasting the precious delicacies of a cow on the butcher’s block! I wanted to embrace the tripe and the tendons, like rooting for the Mets. I wanted to honor them, to let their nutrients slowly, but ever so surely, seep into my bloodstream, into my own tendons and stomach, sweetly and imperceptibly finding their way to my most literal and physical of hearts.
The entrees also included a variety of pan-fried or sautéed tofu, meat, and noodle dishes garnished with lemongrass, cilantro, cucumber, cashews, or peanuts. The appetizer menu was primarily composed of variations on the meat-and-vegetables-rolled-in-a-wheat-or-rice-based-wrapper theme. Of special note was the drink menu, which featured, alongside soft drinks, Vietnamese coffee (both iced and hot), tea, and a bevy of the most tropical milkshakes I’ve yet seen in the state of Vermont. Jack fruit, coconut, pineapple, avocado, durian, monthong, and soursop. At $4.25 a pop, they may be a risky venture for the barely employed college student, and, having never tasted the majority of these fruits, I opted out.
When our scrutiny of the menus was complete, I ordered an iced coffee and the aforementioned pho dac biet size large. Calista had the mi wonton soup (also size large), a wheat noodle soup in a base of chicken broth with chicken and beef wontons and bite-size slices of pork along with an avocado milkshake. Together, we shared an order of goi cuon, imperial rolls. Katie went with the mi wontons as well, but in a size small. Chuck ordered…damn, I don’t know what he ordered. It had peanuts in it, and, being allergic to peanuts, I tend to immediately dismiss absolutely anything peanut related. Forgive me for my lack of journalistic integrity.
Our waiter was a shyly smiling, gentle-mannered young man whose face was framed by wire-rimmed glasses. The shade of his blue fleece matched the shade of the ketchup/mustard/hot sauce container on the table. After ordering, he promptly served us tall blue plastic Pepsi cups filled with ice water. As we waited for our food, I surveyed the restaurant. There was only one other party (it was 4:30 in the afternoon, an unorthodox meal time): a pair of middle-aged women who were slurping tea and talking about old friends and famous food critics. Long strands of unidentifiable faux flowers hung from the ceiling.
I was getting anxious. And hungry. An outrageously good bowl of Pho is a veritable marshland of deliciousness. Thin slices of beef, scallions, cilantro, and silky white rice noodles mingle and deliberate in a broth that is subtly spiced with cinnamon, ginger, star anise, and cloves. A plate heaped with limes, mung bean sprouts, cilantro, and sometimes basil is served along with the soup, so you may add as much or as little as you like. And, of course, there’s that bottle of mean, Sriracha-like hot sauce, ready to turn up the flame on the soup.
My anticipation was subdued when our waiter brought out the drinks and imperial rolls. The iced coffee was the usual (very similar to Thai-style iced coffee), which is to say that it was transplendent: strong, French-style coffee softened and transformed by sweetened condensed milk. It was extraordinarily rich and sweet, so for those missing a sweet tooth, this may not be the right beverage. The avocado milkshake was equally tasty. Smoothed to just the right degree of thickness to pass through a plastic straw, the milkshake was, pleasantly, not too sweet and the flavor of the avocado sang strong and clear through the chorus of ice and milk.
The imperial rolls were less enthralling. There were two of them on the plate, cigar shaped wads of thin pork slices, a shrimp, shredded carrots and lettuce, and rice vermicelli, wrapped in a translucent rice skin. They looked like a pair of tropical caterpillars that you would see on the Discovery Channel, but the “cute” kind. Served lukewarm with a tangy, semi-sweet sauce the color of varnished rosewood, the imperial rolls were an exercise in texture as opposed to flavor. In fact, they were rather bland to the taste. But, there was a definite pleasure in their consistency: the rice skin soft and sticky, the crunch of carrot and lettuce, the crumbly denseness of the vermicelli. Every other bite delivered a burst of cilantro, but the shrimp and pork were unfortunately undetectable. Dipped in the sauce, however, the rolls were palatable, if far from ambrosial.
Our salivation mounted as we listened to the music of sizzling stir-fry from the kitchen. Exactly what was being stir-fried, I can’t be sure since we all ordered soups. Maybe it was Chuck’s peanut thing.
In due time, the entrees arrived. The soup was served in clear glass bowls and the portions were humongous, a large being more than enough for two meals. The pho featured a murky broth loaded with slivers of scallion and cilantro with chunks of meat rising to the surface, and a hefty pile of soft but substantial rice noodles beneath.
Unadorned, the broth was unfortunately neutral, the spices subtle to the point of imperceptibility, buried under a robust beefiness. However, after a few handfuls of basil and bean sprouts, a squirt of fresh lime, and a hefty dousing of hot sauce, the broth became a whole new sensation, the way John Travolta reinvented himself in “Pulp Fiction” after spending years as “the guy in ‘Saturday Night Fever.’”
In a good pho, the divergent flavors don’t congeal, but compete, deliberate, and overtake one another. One slurp will deliver a limey cilantro taste, while the next will have a chili/basil overtone. The flavor of this pho had the necessary quarrelsome quality, but the overall effect was lacking in intensity.
Nevertheless, the soup had a complex variety of textures: the rare beef was tender and thin; the beef balls (like meat balls) were spongy orbs of salty, herbed beef; the tripe was stringy and nearly flavorless; the well-done flanks had a flaky, semi-charred quality; and the soft tendons, the surprise delicacy, were pleasantly chewy and cartilaginous. The noodles below were silky and very slippery, requiring a precise chopstick grip.
The mi wonton soup was very similar to the pho, but its broth was slightly darker and porkier. The wheat noodles were very thin, sticky but not mushy, and the wontons themselves were very similar to your average Chinese wonton but smaller.
In near silence, we ate.
Later, sated and ready for a check, we evaluated the meal. The imperial rolls were OK, recommended for those who value texture and lightness. And the pho was good. It wasn’t the incendiary, poly-orgasmic sensation I’d experienced in NYC’s Chinatown, but it was definitely satisfying, especially in the buttery chewiness of the soft tendons. Calista liked the mi wonton soup very much, and Katie found hers “OK,” although she admitted she had really wanted something fried and crunchy, but denied her impulse for one reason or another. I found the soups to be just the thing for the winter chill. Warm and beefy and loaded with medicinally-potent herbs. At $8.49 for a large and $6.95 for a small, they’re also reasonably affordable, if not quite dirt cheap. The small was roughly four sevenths the size of the large. As for Chuck’s peanut thing, he said, with a sheepish snicker, “it was pretty good.” The uncontestable highlights were the drinks.
Both the iced coffee and the avocado milkshake were scrumptious.
The service was excellent as well. Our blue-fleeced waiter was one of the most genuinely courteous I’ve ever met, and we were served promptly and professionally. The ambiance was very laid back and comforting, in a plastic and aluminum kind of way. With entrees ranging from $6.55 (for a basic pho) to $12.49 (for sauted soft shell crab with sauce and rice), Vietnam Restaurant is relatively affordable and generally worth the price. There are a wide variety of dishes, and while the flavors aren’t as extreme, or perhaps as authentic, as a cheap Chinatown eatery, the proximity of Vietnam Restaurant and the freshness of its meals make it a feasible choice for solid Vietnamese eats. I’ll be going back again, if only to get my taste buds on some of that monthong milkshake.