Bun Rieu (crab cake poached in tangy pork tomato broth w/ rice noodles)
by Celia Cheng
April 29th, 2008
TET
83 Ave A
(5th & 6th St)
212-253-0800
$
Tet is the Vietnamese New Year, the celebration of a new beginning, and it’s a good name for Steven Duong’s new restaurant in Alphabet City. Mr. Duong also owns Nam in Tribeca and O Mai in Chelsea, both longtime local favorites. Nam is one of my top choices in Vietnamese restaurants, especially for the seafood dumplings in soup, so I was eager to try Tet and see what other treats were in store.
Modern, bold and dark, the décor of the restaurant makes me feel at ease while I enjoy the mouth-watering dishes coming out of the kitchen. At Tet, maroon and purple colored walls are accented by beautiful cream-colored, crocheted lampshades. All of which speak of good taste. Likewise, the menu is straightforward and the staff friendly.
I really enjoyed the food. The ingredients are fresh, and the flavors are balanced and subtle. My friend and I started with the chia gio, shrimp, pork, crab and vegetable spring rolls deep fried in rice paper and served with fresh herbs, lettuce wrap and lime dipping sauce. This is my favorite type of spring roll throughout Asian cuisine, and though they seem like a staple on most Vietnamese restaurant menus, good ones are not always easy to come by. Chinatown offers many that are greasy and laden with MSG. Other fusion Vietnamese restaurants often vary the stuffing and lose the balance of flavors. But Tet’s spring rolls are just right. The fried rice paper is thin and light but also chewy. There were only two pieces of lettuce for four spring rolls, and they were used as garnish sitting underneath everything else, which led me to believe that most people don’t use the lettuce as a wrap, but they should, as it tastes so good and fresh with some herbs tucked in.
On my second visit, looking for something a little lighter, I chose the banh xeo(coconut rice flour crepe filled with scallions, shrimp, chicken, bean sprouts, served with fresh herbs, lettuce wrap, and lime dipping sauce) as an appetizer. Though similar, this was even better than the spring rolls. The coconut rice flour crepe is so light and crisp, and the lettuce wrap and dipping sauce are the same, so depending on your mood, spring rolls or crepes are both good starters.
The goi sua, jellyfish, shrimp and cucumber salad topped with peanuts and tangy chili dressing was less spectacular. I like my jellyfish crunchy even though it’s slimy, but the jellyfish in this salad was a bit limp. Still the ingredients paired well, especially the crushed peanuts that added a nutty flavor and the crunch I was missing.
Dinner’s highlight was the bun rieu, poached crab cake, meatballs and rice noodles in a tangy pork tomato broth. In fact, I returned two nights later just to have this dish because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The juicy little meatballs are made with pork and a crab paste that’s ground and sautéed with lemon grass and hot peppers. Plump pieces of halved tomatoes complement the thin strings of rice noodles in a wonderfully tasty tomato pork broth. But the most fabulous part is the fresh crabmeat coated in egg, which, when poached, becomes incredibly tender and floats delicately to the surface. Bits of Thai basil add a burst of fresh flavor, and shreds of raw cabbage create a crunchy contrast. There are quite a few ingredients here, but the flavors, working in unison, are both luscious and subtle. It’s high-end comfort food at its best.
My companion ordered ga nuong, lemon grass chicken, for main, and, being a food snob, I wasn’t planning on touching it. In my mind, lemon grass chicken is as banal as Vietnamese food can get and the thought of a piece of boring roasted white meat arriving at the table was devastating. However, Tet’s lemon grass chicken is delicious. Both dark and white meat are served sliced, and while by nature white meat will never be as tender as dark, it was not dry and, in fact, very flavorful. Dipping the chicken in the garlic-heavy, tangy lime sauce made it even better. This is a real pleasure to have with white rice. What a pleasant surprise!
The only disappointment was dessert. We ordered a coconut tapioca soup with banana, palm seeds and jackfruit topped with toasted sesame seeds. It arrived lukewarm (it should either be hot or cold but not in between) and tasted rather bland with the tapioca too soft from overcooking. I’m a sesame seed fanatic and these should have been toasted so as to bring out the aroma and also create a crunchier texture. Instead, the seeds were stale.
I am happy to skip dessert, so if we don’t count that blunder, Tet is very good. I look forward to adding it to my list of Southeast Asian favorites, which also includes Fatty Crab and Café Asean.
Posted in Alphabet City , Noodles , Pork , Seafood , Vietnamese
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Almond Banana Cake
by Celia Cheng
February 22nd, 2007
MAI HOUSE
186 Franklin St
(Greenwich & Hudson St)
212-431-0606
Yuck, yuck and yuck! I somehow have regressed to being five years old, but I can’t seem to find adjectives to describe how I feel other than single juvenile words like “gross!”
Mai House is a big step back for chef Michael Bao Huynh of Bao 111 fame. The food at Bao 111 and Bao Noodles that I remember was inventive, not fusion. The difference in these two terms being that in all modern cuisine, it takes sense, skill and ingenuity to modify or use ingredients that work together, regardless of their origins. Fusion is a term that people try to avoid because much of the popular fusion cuisine that developed over the past twenty years showed bad judgment in combining flavors that didn’t necessarily work together merely for the sake of getting a reaction. Mai House is the latest addition to Drew Nieporent’s Myriad Group. Based on the success of the Bao restaurants, I would have said that it was a good idea to hire Michael Bao Hyunh to head this “Vietnamese-inspired fusion” restaurant. However, I feel that the food here is taking less direction from its chef and more from a concept that is not working.
The restaurant was relatively empty for a Thursday night. The biggest brouhaha all night was not so much that Mario Batali was there dining with his wife and two friends, but that the wait staff were fumbling all over each other to make sure the party was happy. The rest of the restaurant seemed deadbeat, its empty tables further magnifying the expansive space of the restaurant.
For me, the first sign of trouble was that, upon perusing the menu, nothing spoke to me. From cocktails, appetizers, entrees to sides… nothing looked good. I don’t recall the last time this has happened to me. My friend asked me what jumped out at me and I literally took five more minutes to try to find anything that whet my appetite. Ultimately, my choices were based on eliminating what I didn’t want to eat, as opposed to deciding between mouth-watering options.
We started with the salt and pepper cuttlefish, which initially looked good to me on the menu until I read the accompanying sweet and sour kiwi sauce. Excuse the regression again but “yuck!” After tasting it, I second that “yuck!” I ended up eating the rest of the squid without the sauce but it wasn’t all that spectacular, as the batter was not cooked through so it didn’t have the light crisp that makes great salt and pepper cuttlefish crave-worthy.
The lemongrass lamb skewers were fine. They tasted good on their own and again were pretty disgusting when dipped in the anchovy sauce. For main dishes we enjoyed a black cod special. I wouldn’t choose to come to a Vietnamese restaurant for black cod but it sounded more appetizing than much of the menu so what the hell. Lest I forget, it’s Vietnamese-inspired, not Vietnamese so if we’re going to go fusion, let’s go all the way.
The one dish that I was curious to try was the duck fried rice, with duck confit, smoked duck and duck egg. Now honestly, based on these four ingredients, rice, duck confit, smoked duck and duck egg, this dish has the potential to be fantabulous! It was far from that and less than lackluster. Where were the smoked duck and duck egg? I was hoping to taste the distinctive aromas of salted duck egg and the juicy flavors of smoked duck. But what arrived was mushy fried rice with overcooked duck meat. I had to drown the rice in hot sauce (even the hot sauce was fusiony gross with sweet overtones) and picked out the duck meat because it was too hard to chew.
The craving listed for this piece is a dessert, almond banana cake, which came with black sesame ice cream and coconut tapioca pearls. It was the lesser evil of the meal but by no means worth talking about.
Sigh! It pains me to have to share this experience in such a negative way but I have to wonder what went wrong? My friend and I just happened to be discussing The Slanted Door (Charles Phan’s knockout Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco) over dinner, which begs the question: Why don’t we have anything remotely close to that caliber of Vietnamese cuisine in New York City? But perhaps a better question is, “Vietnamese-inspired fusion cuisine in New York City and it’s 2007?” You’ve got to be kidding me!
Posted in Fusion , Tribeca , Vietnamese
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Soup & Sandwich Lunch Special
by Celia Cheng
March 10th, 2005
BAO NOODLES
391 2nd Ave
(22nd & 23rd St)
212-725-7770
It’s as if Bao Noodles can read my mind. I always want more than one thing on the menu but even with my healthy appetite I can’t manage it. Now if you eat at the restaurant between 11:30am and 4:30pm, Bao Noodles offers lunch specials. You can get the Soup & Sandwich combo for $10, which gives you a half portion of noodles and half a sandwich. Even the half and half combo is extremely copious. In fact, I probably should have taken the sandwich to go.
I ordered my two favorites, the Pho Tai Gan (oxtail noodle soup with rare beef round and tendon) and chicken sandwich. The Vietnamese are known for their French influenced sandwiches, served on baguettes but with Vietnamese ingredients. The chicken sandwich comes with marinated carrots and daikon, cilantro and spicy mayonnaise. Nothing fancy but definitely a staple to crave!
Posted in Gramercy Park , Noodles , Vietnamese
