FoodNerd!

viet food court

My friend H is recovering from her months of job-seeking and wasn't up for leaving the couch, let alone leaving the house, so I went for dinner on my own. She did, however, pass along the nugget of information that I could walk from her place to Argyle Street's asia-fest. I figured it was 3 el stops, it had to be too far to walk, but turns out I was wrong. I went with H's recommendation to seek out the Vietnamese Food Court, and was well pleased. I knew I wanted pho, because it was cold and I was feeling tired and rundown myself, but I wanted also to try one of the many things on the menu that were new to me. So I went with an appetizer that turned out to be 8 little soy sauce dishes, each filled with rice flour and steamed, then topped with dried shrimp fuzz (what pork sung would be if it was made out of shrimp) and shrimp cake, shallots and scallions, and served with the usual viet-sauce of lime, sugar, fish sauce, & chillies to be spooned into each wee dish. You had to sort of scrape the little rice cake free of the dish, then shovel it right into the mouth. They were delicious, each one a mouthful of sweet, salty, savory, spicy. The pho was very nice, nothing mindblowing, but very satisfying and beefy in the broth, and the meatballs seemed homemade and the rare beef was tender. And the whole thing came in a marvelously bizarre setting: the room is a mishmash of elegant bamboo and gold calligraphy and tube lights and cheesy paper decorations, and at the front is a stage, which that Saturday night was featuring a homegrown band doing reasonably convincing covers of the Cranberries and Bryan Adams and Guns N Roses. Hee.