RESTAURANT REVIEW : Catering to Viet Noodle Tastes in Midst of Reseda

When looking for an ethnic restaurant, neighborhood is everything. Unfortunately, the economy being what it is these days, the Third World can’t afford to set up enclaves just anywhere--while you might find a delicious, authentic Ecuadorean cevicheria in the Galleria, don’t bet your last sucre on it.

Los Angeles has dozens and dozens of thriving ethnic neighborhoods, from the vast expanse of Mexican East L.A. to the tiny Guatemalan strip just south of Westlake Park. One of the least likely neighborhoods is micro-Vietnam, a block of restaurants, grocery stores and Vietnamese-French bakeries set smack-dab among the head shops and motorcycle garages of downtown Reseda.

Vietnamese sit in noodle shops, sipping strong coffee and trying to blot out the ubiquitous blare of Vietnamese disco music, which will make you want your MTV more than you can imagine. Weekend afternoons, the tables are filled with giggling schoolgirls just back from church and fathers slurping huge bowls of noodle soup with their young sons. Others stop off for a snack, the latest gossip and a peek at the Vietnamese-language newspapers. Service is prompt and jovially adversarial, like the kind at Art’s Deli.

When you wander into Pho So 1, which is the most authentic noodle shop in the area, you bashfully hang around by an aquarium up front until a waiter points you toward the only table unoccupied by either customers or dishes left over from the lunch rush. The restaurant is a basic storefront dining hall, a big room with low acoustic-tile ceilings and wall banners, napkin dispensers and a glass-front refrigerator filled with queer, sweet bean drinks and bottles of French “33” beer.

As in most Vietnamese noodle shops, the best thing in the place-- pho (pronounced something like “far”) dac biet , bits of brisket, tripe and rare beef submerged with slippery rice noodles in a sweet, well-spiced, intensely beefy broth--is listed first on the menu; the other listings on the first page are mostly subtle variations on that dish.

You squeeze a little lime juice and red-chili sauce into the soup, and mix in bean sprouts, fiery, sliced green chilies and leaves of spicy Vietnamese basil; the noodles, tasty enough on their own, become almost supernally good. Soup or salad? Both.

Bun thit is another superb noodle salad, a bed of fine vermicelli topped with lettuce, herbs, grilled pork strips and ground peanuts. You pour over it from a small bowlful of nuoc cham , the clear, sweet garlic fish sauce that is to Vietnamese cooking what soy sauce is to Chinese, and toss (as you may have noticed, this cuisine has a strong do-it-yourself element). The slightly tart sauce cuts the richness of the meat, and the contrast of tastes, textures and temperatures is indescribably good.

The same sauce is served with cha gio , which is rice-paper stuffed with transparent rice noodles, minced pork and crab, fried until crisp (and here, until tough; the dish is better elsewhere). Wrap the “spring rolls” in a leaf of romaine lettuce with fresh mint, stir a dab of chili paste into the sauce and dip.

Thick, fragrant beef stew is elusively spiced--it’s only later that you realize cinnamon is the primary flavor--and comes with hot French bread for dunking; addictively greasy fried pork chops come with a savory little steamed cake of minced pork bound with egg. You can get a plate of raw, marinated shrimp and a small, Sterno-fired grill that will sort of half-heartedly cook them.

Pho So 1 is probably the best place this side of Westminster’s Little Saigon to get the traditional seven-course, all-beef dinner called bo bay mon --for about $9. You are brought a Thai-like salad of rare beef, julienne vegetables and peanuts, then raw beef and a pot of boiling vinegar to drag them through briefly until just cooked.

There is a big, fluffy meatball that you scoop up with crunchy shrimp chips, and then a big platter filled with rolls: tough, sliced beef rolled around something white and crunchy; a tasty beef dumpling wrapped in translucent, white caul fat, and minced beef wrapped in grilled la lot leaves--which either do or don’t have a mild narcotic effect, depending on who you believe. Holy cow, the stuff is good!

Until you get bored with the process halfway through the meal, you wrap the stuff in sticky rice-paper with lettuce, mint and basil, carrot sticks, radish and astringent slices of green plantain, and then dip the bundles into either nuoc cham or a weirdly funky fish-fruit pate called mam nem , which is probably a taste best acquired in childhood. Early childhood.

Pho So 1, 7231 Reseda Blvd., Reseda (818) 996-6515. Open daily 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Parking in rear. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $6-$20.