delectation

Vietnam II

I picked up my parents from the Oakland airport on Friday morning, and once I got them settled in their hotel, just across the way from the Nordstrom Shopping Center in the heart of downtown, we headed off on foot for Vietnam II, a Vietnamese Pho place in the Tenderloin (a neighborhood in SF dubbed a place of "high density urban blight" by Wikipedia). Urban blight or not, I enjoy walking around (certain parts of) the TL -- it's bright and vibrant with cool graffiti art, and dozens upon dozens of tantalizing hole-in-the-wall-types of restaurants just waiting to be explored. The weekend before last I was also in the area for one of my now-favourite street/ art festivals on a bright beautiful perfect autumn saturday.

See the street fest info. & pictures here & here.

We arrived just before noon and the place, admittedly larger than your average hole-in-the-wall, was still relatively empty. But by the time we left an hour later, it was full and hopping with activity and still more people arriving.

Dad observed that the voluminous menu was not only written in Vietnamese and English, but also Chinese, and that he heard the staff conversing in Mandarin. We noticed a bunch of Chinese-style rice plates on the menu, as well as Chow-fun and Chow mein dishes, and we speculated that the restaurant was probably not purely Vietnamese, but perhaps staffed by Chinese who were from Vietnam. Everyone was very nice and smiley and very pleasant, and service very expedient.

To start we had a dish of deep fried imperial rolls stuffed with pork, mushrooms, bits of carrots and noodles, thoughtfully cut into pieces for easier munching and sharing, and served over a bed of lettuce with still more clear glass noodles.

We chose a big bowl of their classic, special pho, one of the top two soups on their menu, and the most expensive, topping at $6.50: thin rice noodles, circle steak, tripe, flank steak, beef tendons, and beef balls. It came with the usual dish of bean sprouts, asian basil, cilantro, a lemon wedge and some slices of chile (not sure what kind -- jalapeno?). I am not a fan of uncooked bean sprouts and so I just opted for adding a few leaves of basil to the anisey-broth, and a teeny dab of sambal oelek, which added some kick. It was yummy, but Dad, grumbling slightly, did point out that some establishments in Southern Californial's Little Saigon (they live near the largest Vietnamese community in the US, after all) offered with their pho larger chunks of the gelatinous tendons he likes so much.

To round off lunch we added a dish of garlic and ginger ong-choy, or kang-kong, -- sauteed water cabbage; and a dish of that sweetish-mayonnaisy shrimp with walnuts (definitely not Vietnamese, methinks, or even authentic Chinese for that matter). The vegetables were fabulous, but the shrimp dish, unfortunately, just ok.

Even with my Dad's newest diet du jour (he is hypoglycemic, and his Doctor appears to have jumped on the Atkins low-carb bandwagon) he is a veritable bottomless pit. We polished off everything with the exception a small amount of the noodles, and strode out, holding our bellies, into the early autumn afternoon.

411

• 701 Larkin St. (at Ellis); (415) 885-1274. Breakfast, lunch, dinner daily, 9 AM-11 PM
• SF Chronicle Review; also made this years' Bargain Bites listing
• Listing of some menu items + prices
• Wikipedia has my favourite one-paragraph description:

  At any number of eateries around the 'Loin, you can order pho, the Vietnamese beef and noodle soop that's correctly written with some curly bits over the "o," and correctly pronounced somewhere between "phuh" and "phah." It will always cost about five dollars; it will always come with your choice of meat (slices of rare beef, well-done brisket, tripe, tendon, and meatballs are the most common) simmering in a clear, pungent broth along with a tangle of thin rice noodles; it will always be accompanied by a heap of mung bean sprouts, leafy basil and mint stalks, lemon wedges, and slices of chili pepper; and it will always be served in bowls ranging from merely large to mind-bogglingly enormous. But only at Vietnam II will you enjoy your pho while gazing upon an indoor koi pond, and browsing through a vast menu of other delicacies. Everything from deep fried quail to pig intestine porridge is available to the adventurous, along with Chinese standards like lo mein and fried rice. $4.95 (pho)-16.95 (fresh lobster).