Little Saigon, Big Appetite

Orange County is fortunate to have the largest concentration of Vietnamese restaurants anywhere outside Vietnam. That translates into an almost unlimited number of options for experiencing this exotic, multidimensional cuisine, and the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, being celebrated again this weekend, is an ideal time to do so.

Vietnam was long under the influence of foreign powers: India, China, later France, and much later, the United States. That’s why you have curry spices in a proper Vietnamese crab curry; the aromatic five-spice mixture in stir-fried Vietnamese five-spice chicken; the elegant rice noodle soup known as pho; pate sandwiches; filtered coffee and delicate French-style pastries.

In fact, one could easily make the case that the fusion craze that is sweeping the American restaurant scene was born in the kitchens of Vietnam. I’m not sure that this is an entirely valid argument. It is, however, an undeniably interesting one.

What better way to celebrate Tet than by visiting one of our myriad Vietnamese restaurants or markets? In the enormous Asian Garden Mall alone, there are dozens of snack stands and restaurants, as well as a supermarket where a variety of unusual herbs and greens are sold.

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I love to visit Little Saigon at breakfast, when the community is waking up, and the streets, especially Westminster Avenue, are still relatively quiet. That’s when I go to Song Long Bakery, for a mushroom omelet, a flaky croissant and steamy pot of Vietnamese coffee topped with a thick layer of condensed milk.

When it is snack time, midmorning, I love to stop by at the restaurant Thien Thanh, for terrific cha gio--dense, minced crab, rice noodle and ground pork-stuffed Vietnamese-style egg rolls.

At lunch, when most people around here are slurping their pho--meal-in-a-bowl rice noodle soup--I like to grab a banh mi, or Vietnamese sandwich. There are literally dozens of places in Little Saigon for this specialty, which is a fresh, sliced French baguette stuffed with items like jellied pork, duck pate, pickled vegetables and French-style mayonnaise.

The Vietnamese are great lovers of beef, evidenced by a predominance of bo bay mon (seven courses of beef) restaurants, two being Anh Hong and Pagolac. At these places, generally popular during the evening, you’ll wade your way through dishes such as beef salad, beef soup, char-grilled cylinders of beef, steamed beef and beef with lemongrass, until you are well past the bovine saturation point.

Finally, when the evening begins to wane, Little Saigon still rocks, with an abundance of places that stay open until the wee hours. This is the best time to eat light fare such as pho soup or Vietnamese-style noodle dishes, just the way it is done in night markets all over Asia.

No matter how you have your pho noodles--with thinly sliced beef, beef brisket, beef tendon, beef tripe or the crunchy meatballs bo vien, know that this is precisely the type of cultural encounter that makes living in the Southland a special joy.

Tet may be a convenient excuse to eat Vietnamese food, but once you acquire a taste for it, you’ll be back no matter what phase the moon happens to be in.