Vietnamese Cuisine Makes French Connection at Mekong

When the French left Indochina in the early ‘50s, they left their coffee and their cuisine behind. Mekong is a displaced consequence--a French-Vietnamese restaurant situated in our Little Saigon and noteworthy for its excellent cooking and strong, sweet cafe filtre.

It’s a tribute to the area’s multiculturalism that the owners feel comfortable draping the entrance with a large red-and-white banner proclaiming “Nha Hang Cuu Long,” literally “Nine Dragons Restaurant.” (In Vietnamese, Mekong-- the name of the famous river--also means nine dragons .)

Indeed, most of Mekong’s customers are smartly dressed young Vietnamese who come to eat this kitchen’s take on French dishes such as escargots and frog legs steamed in curry and plain old Vietnamese ones such as banh xeo , a starchy yellow pancake mixed up with shrimp, pork and bean sprouts. The restaurant is generally quiet until around 8 p.m., but after that, business picks up with a vengeance.

Don’t expect either French or Vietnamese color. With its bright lights and big city atmosphere, a neon Bud sign mounted prominently on one wall and the silk flowers (rather lifeless-looking mini-bouquets perched in glass vases on practically every table), Mekong strikes me as a rather sterile room. On the other hand, some of my friends find the white walls, black Lucite chairs and Impressionist art compelling, even tasteful.

The menu is apt to have the same divisive effect. No doubt many people come here for the so-called French dishes: cote de porc a la Provencal , Chateaubriand with bearnaise-- even, for heaven’s sake, that endangered species lobster Thermidor (which they always seem to be out of). But others, and I include myself among them, are more attracted to dishes such as com tay cam , a tempting rice casserole loaded with fresh garlic; or hu tieu ga quay , rice noodle soup with shrimp and chicken; or cari de , the restaurant’s exquisite curried goat stew.

Should you begin a meal here with soup, stick to one that places itself firmly in the Vietnamese camp. The French-inspired creme de volaille , for example, sounds better than it is. It tastes rather like American canned cream of chicken that hasn’t been diluted. Fortunately, the house crab soup makes up for that. It’s a clear broth thickened only by shredded crab meat and pieces of cut asparagus--and at $2.95 an economical way to taste fresh crab.

As for the escargots-- well, this is more like it. Plastic snail shells notwithstanding, it’s as solid a version as you’ll find in any accomplished French dining room. The large, meaty snails swim in a green garlic butter redolent of parsley and--could it be?--yes, a sneaky touch of cilantro.

Note that cilantro. Most of what the menu calls French dishes are really cross-cultural ones displaying elements of both French and Vietnamese cuisine, and generally quite good.

One dish is resolutely French, however: Chateaubriand a la bearnaise. We’re talking a man-sized hunk of tenderloin beef seared expertly on a grill. We ordered ours rare and got just what we asked for; the steak came up a beautiful reddish pink. Furthermore, the bearnaise was classic, smooth, properly thick and full of fragrant tarragon. At $11.45, they are almost giving this dish away.

Cote de porc a la Provencal and poulet roti au riz are fine as well--not that any self-respecting Gaul would recognize either one. The first is two extra-thick pork chops smothered with garlic, onion and mushrooms, but the meat has first been plunged into a sweet marinade so that it cooks up crunchy, like the traditional Vietnamese barbecued pork.

The poulet undergoes a similar metamorphosis, becoming an Asian fantasy dish. The chicken is shaped into a cylinder topped with a thin, garlicky piece of ultra-crisp chicken skin. It’s served on a bed of something the waitress could only describe as “red rice”: rice, peas and bits of egg fried in a light tomato puree.

The Vietnamese menu is far more extensive--90 dishes, as opposed to 10 on the French side. Spanning the usual beef, rice, seafood and specialty categories, they’re basically the same dishes you can get in any of literally dozens of restaurants nearby. Again, almost everything is delicious.

Com tay cam has to be one of the best rice dishes I’ve ever tasted. It’s rice and whole cloves of garlic baked in a clay pot, topped with little bits of steamed pork, cut up Chinese sausage, whole shrimp and an entire bouquet of herbs. The rice is on the bottom of the pot, and you kind of have to dig through the toppings to get to it: like panning for gold.

Most of the rice noodle dishes ( hu tieu ) come in soup form, served in the oversized bowls in which Vietnamese eat pho , that soup with delicate long noodles and usually topped with sliced beef. These rice noodles, however, are flat and fettuccine-shaped and have far more body. Hu tieu ga quay has the same good roasted chicken as the poulet roti, plus lots of ground pork in the broth. Hu tieu Nam Vang puts shrimp and crab meat in a spicy herbal broth.

That’s only a taste, of course. If you want something substantial, the incredible curried goat should take care of you. It’s exactly like a Kashmiri roghan josh : huge soft chunks of goat, oversized chunks of potatoes and a rich, spicy brown sauce that could pass muster almost anywhere in India. If you’re not a goat person, you can get great whole crab in any of a number of incarnations. And there are huge hot pots with ingredients such as eel and catfish and lots, lots more.

But no matter how carried away you get with the Vietnamese dishes, remember to end up back in France. Unless you crave variations on beans in a glass, the only familiar dessert here is creme caramel , in this case the most caramel-rich version I have ever tasted. And you’ve just got to have a filtered coffee, apparently the restaurants’ raison d’etre to practically everyone who dines here after hours. Some traditions clearly adapt more easily than others.

Mekong is moderately priced. French dishes are $5.50 to $11.45. Asian dishes are $4.25 to $24.95.

MEKONG

8851 Westminster Ave., Garden Grove.

(714) 894-4227.

Lunch and dinner Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday through Sunday till 11 p.m.

MasterCard and Visa accepted.