A touch of elegance

SOMETIMES when I go out with a group of friends for dinner, we play guess the check. Nine times out of 10, most of the guesses are way under. It’s human nature.

Recently, when the check came for dinner for six at S Vietnamese Fine Dining in Westminster, not one person guessed the total correctly. They were all too high and not by a small margin. Our bill for quite a lavish feast came in at $40 per person.

Nobody could believe it. S Vietnamese Fine Dining -- named because the country is roughly shaped like an S -- is no mom and pop affair. S, which we’ll hereafter call it for short, is a real restaurant with a bar, a grand piano and two handsome dining rooms with floor to ceiling windows. It’s quite a bit fancier than any other Vietnamese restaurant I’ve come across in Southern California. Sleek and contemporary, it’s set in a free-standing building with its own parking at the edge of Westminster Mall.

A giant red silk lantern hangs above the entrance. Oil paintings of Vietnamese scenes add color. And a series of backlit green panels give the illusion of light filtered through a bamboo forest. Overhead, pale green silk lampshades shaped like pagodas or traditional straw hats cast a soft light. S is every bit as stylish as the trendy Asian fusion places on the Westside, but for Westminster, where Vietnamese restaurants are usually small, family-run places, S stands out for its ambience and its prices -- which are extremely reasonable for the kind of experience it offers, but more expensive than most places in Little Saigon.

Chef-owner Stephanie Dinh offers a menu that includes both traditional Vietnamese dishes and some with more French or pan-Asian influences. I’ve eaten all over the menu, and you almost can’t go wrong with anything on it. Her cha gio are some of the best I’ve had. Fried to a deep gold, and not a bit greasy, these Vietnamese spring rolls are filled with a savory mixture of pork, crab and shrimp. Roll them up in a leaf of butter lettuce with sprigs of mint and basil. They’re delicious dipped in a sweet, gingery vinegar sauce. Goi cuon feature rice paper rolled around cool rice noodles with sliced shrimp, coconut-infused pork and a chiffonade of lettuce and basil. An even lighter roll features a similar filling, but instead of rice paper, the wrapper is thinly sliced cucumber. I also liked the minced pork and periwinkles steamed in banana leaves.

Vietnamese cuisine is light and summery, perfect for Southern California’s climate and tastes, yet somehow it isn’t as known as it should be. Maybe because other than pho houses, most Vietnamese restaurants are confined to Westminster or Monterey Park. For those unfamiliar with the cuisine, waiters at S are helpful in suggesting dishes. And don’t worry, they’ll tell you if you’re ordering too much or too little. One pointed out that we shouldn’t miss the chao tom, which is very traditional. The kitchen takes sugar cane skewers and wraps them in a finely chopped shrimp mousse, which is then steamed and grilled. As with the cha gio, you eat it rolled up in a butter lettuce leaf with a bouquet of herbs.

More unusual is escargots in a sweet coconut curry sauce, which is great for soaking up with rafts of bread or shrimp chips. It’s very rich, better for sharing with others than for ordering all for yourself.

Two of the best appetizers in Dinh’s arsenal are available only on weekends. The first would be a Vietnamese-inspired ceviche piled high in a martini glass and garnished with red onion and chopped peanuts. Shrimp, scallops and whatever else Dinh finds at the fish market are marinated in a hot, lime-drenched sauce. Scoop it up in the shrimp chips served with it. Her carpaccio is fine slices of raw beef topped with scallions, celery and cucumber, with fresh lime squeezed over and a drizzle of sesame sauce and a scattershot of ground peanuts.

I’d be perfectly content to just stick with the appetizers, it’s such a sociable way to eat. At other tables, Vietnamese families linger over dinner, passing dishes, taking bites of this and that. Two women catch up over bowls of pho, the classic beef and noodle soup. There’s also a lovely lemon grass broth loaded with clams, scallops, shrimp, crab and mushrooms. It’s so expressive of Dinh’s graceful aesthetic.

One of Vietnam’s best known dishes is “shaken beef,” cubes of very tender sauteed filet (you shake the pan when you cook it), tossed with garlic, onions and crunchy slivered shallots. It’s a terrific dish with a bowl of steamed rice.

The French influence on Vietnam’s cooking is evident in Dinh’s ga nau ruou, chicken braised in red wine with root vegetables and mushrooms. It’s a respectable coq au vin, and it will absolutely feel familiar to anybody who knows French food. Another dish I enjoyed is ca kho to, fish braised in a clay pot with chile and scallions. The catfish takes on a dark color and looks, at first, more like osso buco than fish. The taste is rich and almost meaty, another dish that needs a bowl of rice to soak up the sauce.

Jumbo shrimp come halved and in the shell, served like scampi, the better to suck out the juices. Chicken in a coconut milk-based curry is cloyingly sweet, though some people at my table polished it off with relish.

I love that Dinh has included a children’s menu at both lunch and dinner. It does have your ordinary penne pasta and crispy chicken fingers, but it also offers a child-sized bowl of pho.

The menu accommodates vegetarians with items including a veggie version of cha gio, rice noodle with tofu and vegetables and crispy soft tofu in a dark soy vinaigrette.

The wine list is a bit perfunctory, but still offers far more than most Asian restaurants. A note at the top explains that the wines are chosen to go with the food. Whites include a Vouvray from the Loire Valley and a Semillon from Australia. Under the category soft and easy-drinking reds, you’ll find Greg Norman’s Pinot Noir from Santa Barbara, and under rich and full-bodied reds, La Vieille Ferme Cotes du Ventoux from Southern France. She’s gone to the trouble of purchasing decent wineglasses too, in a couple of shapes.

Desserts? It’s often hard for anyone who didn’t grow up on them to appreciate Vietnamese desserts. But here, even the most traditional are accessible. Take the wedge of cassava cake. There’s something so appealing in its starchy texture, under-sweetened if anything -- all the better to contrast with the rich coconut milk tapioca surrounding it. A ball of coconut ice cream completes the ensemble. And who wouldn’t go crazy for battered fried bananas arranged in a martini glass around a big scoop of vanilla ice cream? And for coffee lovers, it’s worthy mentioning that the Vietnamese coffee, that delirious mixture of condensed milk with strong espresso, is excellent here.

What’s not to like?

**

S Vietnamese Fine Dining

Rating: **

Location: 545 Westminster Mall Drive, Westminster; (714) 898-5092; www.sfinedining.com.

Ambience: Contemporary Vietnamese restaurant with two spacious dining rooms, silk lanterns and backlit panels the color of new bamboo shoots.

Service: Gracious and helpful.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $7 to $14; main courses, $14 to $26; desserts, $4 to $7; lunch appetizers, $6 to $9; lunch entrees, $8 to $11.

Best dishes: Cha gio (spring rolls), Vietnamese-inspired ceviche, chao tom (sugar cane skewers with shrimp mousse), escargots in sweet coconut curry, lemon grass seafood soup, shaken beef, fish in clay pot, jumbo shrimp, whole lobster (by advance order only).

Wine list: Small, intelligent selection of wines that match the food. Corkage, $10.

Best table: A round table against the windows.

Details: Open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Full bar. Lot parking next to the restaurant.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.