HOANG MAI WINS OVER DUBIOUS DINER

You never know about a Vietnamese restaurant. It may or may not take credit cards (Hoang Mai doesn’t). It may be decorated like a Chinese doss house or a suburban parlor (Hoang Mai is parlorish, neat as a pin with a silvery color scheme). It’s a safe bet, though, that before you know it you’ll be eating things you never thought you would.

Heck, we already eat snails and squid and raw fish these days, so why should we quail (we eat that, too) at fermented fish sauce? Or gristle, for that matter?

Yes, gristle. Bear with me. Forget about the texture and recall a tendon you may have bitten down on in a pot roast. It has a sort of dusty-gelatinous flavor that is not at all unpleasant.

OK, you can think about the texture again. If the stuff is cut thin enough--in the charmingly named “tiny rice with BBQ beef and chopped pork” at Hoang Mai the pork is chopped into virtual threads--it is not a chore to eat. It’s just crunchy.

Maybe you’re not ready for this kind of adventure. In that case, let me say that Hoang Mai has served me some of the best Vietnamese food in any style I’ve ever had. The menu has also been approved by 10 fun-loving members of UC Irvine Pi Beta Phi I took there as a public service of this column, and they would not kid about something like this.

At first, they were not at all sure about eel, and certainly “chopped eel with crispy rice paper” is one of the least mouth-watering menu descriptions ever. They gobbled it up, though: ground eel, rich and meaty, mixed with chopped peanuts and green onion, to be picked up with peppery rice crackers.

I still get the feeling you’re not convinced. Maybe I should emphasize the familiar: fresh crab--you can order either Eastern crabs or smaller ones (no kidding) from Texas--sauteed in butter with lots of black pepper; Chao tom, the shrimp-meat shish kebab that uses a length of sugar cane for the skewer, or crisp spring rolls to be rolled up in a lettuce-and-pickled-carrot taco.

Or soups, the famous hearty Vietnamese noodle soups. Or noodles topped with barbecued meat--you can’t go wrong there. I should point out that if you want the rice vermicelli, ask for a fork because the stuff tends to mat up. If you try picking it up with a chopstick, you may get the queasy feeling you’ve scalped Jerry Dunphy.

Or “island,” which is what this menu calls Mongolian hot pot, that well known cook-at-your-table dish where you poach sliced meats in simmering broth. This is the best I’ve had it at a Vietnamese place. The Vietnamese usually make it with just simmering water, maybe with a little vinegar and green onion in it, rather than broth, and they’re usually surprised when you ask for a soup spoon.

At Hoang Mai, though, they use chicken broth and it’s the high point of the meal. Maybe it picks up some flavor from the shrimp and beef you’re poaching in it, but basically it is being reduced throughout the process. They don’t use Sterno in this hot pot, but half a dozen blazing charcoal briquets--the broth is actually boiling. By the time you bring out the soup spoon, it’s concentrated almost to gravy.

So if you want to play safe, you can. Still you’ll be surprised by a lot of things on this menu. Some of it could pass for California nouvelle, like “rare beef sauteed with lemon,” which is a sort of briefly cooked beef seviche. “Beef stew on salad with rice” is that nouvelle cliche, hot meat on salad greens, except that here the beef (chunks of steak) comes with a thin gravy and a lot of thin-sliced sauteed onions, and everything mixes with the vinegar of the salad dressing in a very appealing way.

Some things just look gorgeous. Steamed rice dumplings could pass for Japanese, a concentric pattern of blazing white coin-shaped pasta, topped with something orange and powdery that the menu said was pork skin (I think). It even tastes good with one of the ubiquitous Vietnamese dipping sauces.

This is a hard-working and accomplished restaurant, one where for once you can perhaps detect a French influence (the waiter is as likely to answer you oui as yes). Hoang Mai offers French meals as well, though only for parties of 20 or more because of the low price: around $16 for, say, onion soup, mackerel filet au vin blanc, poached eggs in Mornay sauce and duck a l’orange . The kitchen also plans a French bakery and already makes very good European-style cakes.

Altogether, a very good, very interesting and very reasonably priced place. Most things are $2.50 to $5, with a couple of items such as the “island” going for up to $11.50.

HOANG MAI

10557 Bolsa Ave., Garden Grove

(714) 554-3624

Open for lunch and dinner daily.

No credit cards.