Bia Hoi: A little nosh, a little Vietnamese beer

Gingergrass's new annex Bia Hoi is up and running featuring its namesake beer, a Vietnamese fresh-beer style brew made in collaboration with Eagle Rock Brewery. At $4 a pint, the 3.8% alcohol beers is of course pricier than its 15 cent Vietnamese counterpart. But this is L.A., and it's a nice light beer just right for a warm summer evening. If you prefer something a little more hefty, there's Cháu Tiên Pale Ale from Carmel's Vietnamese brewer Tuan Chau Tien or Coronado Islander IPA. A small bar menu includes chicken liver pate toasts ($8), a mango/conch salad with shrimp chips($6), savory braised pork and bacon bao (at left) and steamed mussels ($8). The wooden stools aren't really meant for lingering over a pitcher, but they evoke a Vietnamese fresh beer parlor and make a better spot to wait for a Gingergrass table than the sidewalk. During the day, baked goods and salads will provide quick lunches in the space. With new Vietnamese spots like Downtown's Blossom continuing to flood into Silver Lake, it's nice to see the area's original modern Viet restaurant keeping things fresh and sudsy.

Red Medicine: Lunch is over, how about dinner?

"Red Medicine. There's just so much...baggage," sighed one man about town when I mentioned lunching there recently with another food writer. And it's true, more people wanted to know if we were photographed and booted out of the restaurant like L.A. Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila when she tried to eat there. But no, in the waning days of lunch service, they seemed happy to have customers. The restaurant is now open for dinner and drinks only, starting at 6 p.m. Though it's gotten a near-rave from Jonathan Gold and glowing mentions of the desserts elsewhere, it seems many people still haven't been to Red Medicine, which is turning out some very creative interpretations of Vietnamese dishes.

I was more interested in the food than the reputation, but the now-departed lunch menu only gave me a tantalizing preview of what might be in store on the much more ambitious dinner menu. Fried sweet potatoes sounded like a fun small bite, but turned out to be a massive bolster of shredded sweet potatoes meant to be torn apart, wrapped in lettuce leaves and dipped in sauce. It's similar to the Vietnamese dish banh tom, but without the shrimp. Great presentation, but this would serve about six people as an appetizer and the two of us were a bit overwhelmed.
Chicken dumplings are nem in Vietnamese, more like little chicken meatballs than a wrapped dumpling. Served on a multi-sectioned plate with an array of dipping sauces, they're tasty little bites, but not startlingly flavorful. The pork belly banh mi with pate would be better shared among several people, so rich were its fillings.
But the dinner choices sound fascinating, with dishes like Roasted brassicas with Chinese sausage, smoked date and maitake mushrooms, or Lamb belly with salsify and hibiscus-onion.
Red Medicine picked a Wilshire Blvd. location that some people view as a no man's land, but the interior design has an industrial chic that begs you to come dressed in, for example, a severe grey silk sheath with large architectural eyeglasses. Pull on something black or grey and go now, before something else changes, and let me know how the dinner menu is faring.
Red Medicine
8400 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills
323-651-5500

The Spice Table: Stylish and fragrant in Little Tokyo

The Spice Table is on Central, next to Weiland Brewery

L.A.'s newfound devotion to modern Vietnamese has taken a giant leap forward with The Spice Table,
which adds Singapore flavors and a urban rustic feel to the former Cuban restaurant in Little Tokyo.
While Sang Yoon's Lukshon near Culver City offers a long menu of Asian-influenced dishes in a sleek modern space, The Spice Table is definitely more Downtown (and just steps from the Gold Line station!). The weathered brick walls and filament lighting in Vietnamese bird cages make space feel more like a restaurant in Portland or San Francisco -- it's warm and inviting, buzzing with conversation and a soundtrack of non-offensive music from the likes of Coldplay, U2 and the Cure.
For now, the menu is fairly brief, though lunch service with house-baked baguettes for banh mi is in the offing. Dishes are based on Singapore, where chef Bryant Ng (opening chef at Pizzeria Mozza) has roots, and Vietnam, where Ng's wife Kim has roots.

The menu is mostly small plates; we didn't try any of the main courses though spicy mackerel and coconut grilled in banana leaves looked fun to try -- others include chicken curry, oxtail and short rib stew and catfish claypot. 

Pâté is a good way to start

House-made  pâté will ably stave off the initial hunger pangs -- it's served with a dish of aioli on soft baguettes that are surely only a pale imitation of what's to come from the bread oven eventually.
Everyone who's been there already mentions the fried cauliflower with a light tempura coating ($7). I still prefer the roasted version at the Lazy Ox, but this one is nicely executed with a salty, spicy dipping sauce that brings the dish to life.
The Singapore influence is seen in the satay section of the menu, which offers chicken, pork, beef, lamb belly and chile prawns. We went for the less-usual lamb belly ($10), and it was tender and just fatty enough carry the lamb flavor, served with the traditional peanut sauce. Kon loh mee was a flavorful bowl of noodles with ground pork ($12) that would have been excellent had it just been served hot instead of tepid.

Though the waiter cautioned we wouldn't have enough food, we were actually fine with the addition of kaffir lime custard, a well-balanced and refreshing end to a light but rich meal. There's also house-made soft serve ice cream, but I had already been to Scoops for lunch, so next time...
The beer list of mostly draft Californian selections is well thought-out with the choice of a 4 oz. sample glass, a 12 oz. pour or a pint. Abita Amber and Alesmith IPA were perfect with our deeply-flavored small plates; other beers on the list include The Bruery's Rugbrod and Orchard White, North Coast Brewing Pranqster and Le Merle Saison, Napa Smith Pilsener, Craftsman Heavenly Hefe and Singapore's Tiger beer in bottles.
Though it's early days, the Spice Table seems like just the kind of restaurant Downtown needs -- multicultural, comfortable and stylish, not too too expensive, with real attention to flavors and drinks -- now if they could just get the baguette oven up and running.
The Spice Table
114 S. Central

213-620-1840

Good Girl Dinette extends hours

Good Girl Dinette is something of a hidden gem in Highland Park, and now it's even easier to fit in a visit for the spicy jalapeno fries or curry chicken pot pie. Good Girl is now open for lunch on Fridays (yay, my day off!) and all day on Saturdays (noon to 10) and Sundays (noon to 9). Who eats at Good Girl?  Here's the perfect snapshot of modern-day Highland Park from Good Girl's blog:

lizz and isaac's wedding

i met lizz and isaac about a week or two into the dinette's opening: they were looking for fuel for their veggie oil benz and i was looking to dispose of my frying oil. lizz is the owner of the eco-clothing line, popomomo, and isaac is a sculptor. and somewhere between their regular visits to the dinette for dinner (where they would always order spicy fries) and their weekly visits to pick up the restaurant's used oil, we became friends.

Xoia: Modern Vietnamese with a side of tacos

Co-owner Jose Sarinana's art covers the walls

Pork tacos have intricate seasonings

Quick, name where you ate if you lived near Echo Park in 2000: Barragan's, Pescado Mojado, Rodeo Grill, Freres Taix...the Brite Spot. There were a few more, none of them much of a culinary destination. Ten years later, Echo Park is a bustling nightlife area, detailed in last week's L.A. Times' article Echo Park Evolves Into Hipster Destination. As a beer lover, I'm excited for Mohawk Bend to open, but what most areas need even more than more bars are more casual, reasonably-priced places to grab a bite.

Mi quang noodles

Xoia picks up the vaguely Vietnamese thread that's always run through Echo Park (A1 Market, Phnom Penh) and fuses it to the hood's strong Latino background. and Owner Thien Ho brings a full Vietnamese menu with inspiration from the neighborhood and her husband Jose Sarinana's heritage, so you'll find pho beef or Mi Quang pork tacos (3 for $5.75) and banh mi sandwiches made with lemongrass pork carnitas ($6.50). All the phos - chicken, beef and vegetarian are $8.25, with a richly flavored stock that outdoes most of the other Vietnamese places in the immediate area. Several dishes go beyond the familiar pho and banh mi, like Mi Quang, a dish from Hoi An with thick rice noodles in a curry-flavored sauce with shrimp, pork and banana blossom and rice crackers on the side. There's also green papaya or chicken salad, Vietnamese coffee and housemade Vietnamese coffee ice cream, making this one of the larger Vietnamese menus in the area.

Banh xeo crepes with distinctive peanut sauce

Pros: Everything is fresh, tasty and reasonably-priced.
Cons: No beer or wine. Service can be a little scattered, but when we received different dishes than what we had ordered, the server graciously wrapped up the extra ones for us to enjoy at home.
 Xoia

1801 W. Sunset Blvd.
  (213) 413-3232



(Mi Quang photo from Xoia's website.)

Xoia surfs the Vietnamese wave into Echo Park

It's only fitting that my first meal at Echo Park's new Xoia started with pho tacos. The restaurant is owned by longtime Echo Park residents Jose Sarinana and Thien Ho, and the food is mostly homestyle Vietnamese, influenced by Ho's heritage fro the city of Hoi An. This article from the Eastsider explains how the restaurant came about. Just a few years ago, I never would have believed that the Silver Lake-Atwater area would giver near-Eastsiders a choice of Indochine, Viet Noodle Bar, Gingergrass and Pho Cafe, and now Echo Park has its own version with just a touch of Latin influence -- at least in the tacos.
Since the launch of Kogi BBQ truck, pretty much every cuisine serves tacos, and these juicy tacos made with pho beef just needed a touch of soy sauce and housemade salsa to bring them to life.

Pho beef tacos

Xoia is still in soft-opening stage, with a limited menu and dinner service only. But in a few weeks, more menu items will be added and lunch will kick off too. The former paint store is bright and modern, decorated with Sarinana's abstract paintings, with a small patio that's nicely enclosed so that diners don't have to sit right on the Sunset Blvd. sidewalk. A clutch of bloggers were invited Monday to try some signature dishes, and I liked both the tacos and the beef pho. With a heartier, more flavorful broth than is sometimes found in the nouveau Vietnamese spots and a jumbo helping of noodles, this is a solid bowl of pho for $8.50.
The menu also has spring rolls, vegetarian pho, banh mi at around $6.50, chicken curry and an intriguing noodle dish, Mi quang, with thick rice noodles, shrimp, pork, mint and sesame cracker chips. There's no liquor license at the moment, though they may apply for one down the line.
Xoia
1801 Sunset Blvd.
Echo Park

213-413-3232

How many bloggers can fit in one Starry Kitchen?

At least six bloggers celebrating the Starry Kitchen grand opening...

The famous crispy tofu balls

The Starry Kitchen has been open for three months now, but things were so crazy that owners Nguyen and Thi Tran waited until this week to throw a grand opening party. It was grand indeed, although I starting knocking over bottles as soon as I walked in, in some strange flashback of the previous week's wine-soaked 9 hour lunch. Nguyen was as hyper as ever, hugging bloggers and faithful customers who were lapping up Korean noodles, chicken wings and the restaurant's signature crispy tofu balls. The balls are an ideal tofu delivery device, larded with corn kernels (can you use the word larded with tofu), coated with some rice krispy type flakes and something extremely green, then deep fried and drizzled with spicy mayo. They also go pretty well with beer. Unfortunately the Starry Kitchen has no liquor license as yet (it was a private party), but they will be opening for dinner starting next Thursday until 9 pm.

Starry Kitchen starts dinner soon; free sodas Monday

Malaysian chicken curry, coconut rice, japchae noodles

At Friday's Twitter-convened blogger lunch, which somehow mushroomed to about 10 people, Starry Kitchen owner Nguyen Tran announced that it had been their biggest day in three months of business, so he's treating customers to free sodas on Monday in celebration. The irrepressible Tran and his wife Thi are glowing with pride due to Starry Kitchen's near-instant popularity with the Downtown lunch crowd. And there's good news for those who don't happen to be Downtown during Starry Kitchen's weekday lunch hours: in just a few weeks, they'll be open for dinner on Thursdays and Fridays, just in time for the California Plaza free concerts during the summer.

Now, on to our lunch. Clearly, not everyone gets to sample pan-Asian dishes like Malaysian free-range chicken curry on coconut rice with three great wines the way we did, thanks to sommelier David Haskell, who brought the wines and helped us pair them. But Starry Kitchen's rotating array of home-style Vietnamese/fusion dishes -- from Japanese meatball curry made with Angus beef to lemongrass chicken -- would be delicious even without wine. Lunchers can choose the daily selections in a banh mi, a wrap, a salad or with rice, at reasonable prices -- everything is around $8 or $9.
It was the last day of braised coconut jackfruit, nearly a dead ringer for Vietnamese stewed beef with lots of star anise, which went well with the red Cotes de Brouilly. I always love Domaine Tempier Bandol rose, and it seemed especially appropriate to be drinking it during the Cannes film festival, even if it was paired with chicken curry in the middle of Downtown L.A. Korean japchae noodles with earthy shitakes were also a

Japanese curry meatballs over salad

good match for the red wine. Starry Kitchen's coleslaw was perfectly balanced, on the creamy side but not sweet or cloying. I'll bet it would be a great match for the famous crispy tofu balls, which are coming back on Monday.
Starry Kitchen is a super fun place, with owners who clearly love what they do -- Nguyen seems to be having a great time, especially compared to his former life as a film producer's rep. The food is closest in style to Good Girl Dinette, but with lots of their own imaginative twists. Nguyen says they're hoping to expand, so I'll be a happy eater if Starry Kitchen shows up in Silver Lake, mid-Wilshire or Pasadena.
Starry Kitchen
350 S. Grand Ave. (California Plaza)
213-617-3474

Good Girl Dinette: In Highland Park, why not Vietnamese comfort food?

spicy jalapeno fries, Good Girl Dinette

I was so glad when Good Girl Dinette opened in Highland Park, because it's an up-and-coming area that really needed some variety in its restaurants. I was there for the soft opening a year ago, and it's gotten even better since then with longer hours and a few really solid dishes like the crazy good spicy fries. Here's an excerpt from my review for this month's Los Feliz Ledger.

Good Girl Dinette is a perfect snapshot of Highland Park at this moment
—incrementally gentrifying, but still a humble, unflashy place. Owner/chef Diep Tran cooked at Eagle Rock’s Blue Hen and ran a catering company before starting Good Girl a year ago. The high-ceilinged space is spare and a bit echoey; dinner here (or lunch on weekends) feels like getting invited to an impromptu dinner party at a cool loft-dwelling friend’s house.

Good Girl Dinette's famous chicken curry pot pie

The menu covers a range of familiar Vietnamese dishes with a few ventures into the diner category—from banh mi baguette sandwiches, to pho noodle soup, spring rolls and main dishes served with white or brown rice. Most order the chicken curry pot pie ($10), which takes 30 minutes to cook. It’s a good choice, with chunks of chicken in a mellow curry sauce hiding under a flaky disc of biscuit dough.
Don’t miss the spicy fries, topped with a flurry of diced jalapeno, chopped garlic and cilantro—order them with cilantro-Maggi mayo on the side. Beef stew ($10) sounds prosaic, but balanced five-spice powder seasoning, chunks of carrot and good quality beef cubes lift elevate it. Drinks include Vietnamese coffee or housemade citrus soda; and there’s free corkage.
Good Girl Dinette
110 N. Ave. 56
Highland Park
323-257-8980

Tip Top is near the top of the banh mi heap

Since my favorite Baguette Express closed, most of the San Gabriel Valley's banh mi spots I've tried have been tiny, with no seating and cramped (Banh Mi My Tho) or chaotic and none-too-hygenic (Banh Mi Che Cali.) But now Tip Top's has opened on Valley Blvd. in Rosemead, setting the bar much higher for banh mi emporia. FoodGPS rated the Orange County branch highly in his Little Saigon banh mi bender, so I was excited to try it. We'll get to the sandwiches in a minute. Tip Top's is a veritable food court unto itself. There's a bakery counter, with eclairs, sponge cake (left) as well as super-cheap fresh out of the oven baguettes. (Sure, they're super light and airy, not exactly artisanal, but they make great sandwiches.)
Then there's a gelato bar, with a good selection of flavors including caramel, peach-mango and peanut. Then there's a smoothie bar, with a variety of fresh fruit piled up waiting to make creations like the Wild Skinny juice or the Protector.
Then, there's a coffee bar with Vietnamese coffee as well as cappucino and ice-blendeds. Not full yet? A self-serve frozen yogurt bar offers more than a dozen flavors (taro!) of yogurt with self-serve Vietnamese toppings like jello (at left) as well as the usual Jelly Bellys and M&Ms. Oh, and there's a colorful party room, should your inner 8-year old want to throw a banh mi and yogurt party.
As for the main attractions, the banh mi are first-rate. The super-fresh bread really elevates the sandwiches, which are stuffed with plenty of shredded veggies and available in bbq pork, bbq chicken, deli special, sardine and a few others. There's also a menu of Western sandwiches on foccacia bread like roast beef or egg salad, as well as Vietnamese meat pies, packaged snacks and all the fixings for making banh mi at home like pate and canned sardines. And, it's open from 5 am to midnight, making it a perfect stop to stock up for a trip to the desert, for example.
Tip Top's Sandwiches
8522 Valley Blvd
Rosemead
(626) 571-8185

Vietnam Restaurant: Leafy greens meet surf 'n turf

Even with just a tiny chill in the air last week, I was thinking about soups of the Asian variety. Hot and sour soup was playing a tune in my head, but the haunting melody of a good pho was also teasing me until I could stand it no more and drove to Vietnam Restaurant. Vietnam is one of three restaurants on Las Tunas in San Gabriel owned by various members of the same family. Golden Deli was the first, always a classic, and often quite crowded. Vietnam House is less crowded and serves an ample seven courses of beef, but for some reason I got a blinding headache after I ate there so I'm not that into going back.
Vietnam Restaurant is the third and my favorite of the three. It's not fancy, but various stringed instruments on the wall provide a stab at decor, and the staff is happy to explain how various dishes should be eaten.After we ordered, huge plates of greenery and vegetables started arriving, along with a pile of hard, translucent discs that look like plastic coasters or 45 records. When our surf 'n turf -- charbroiled beef and charbroiled shrimp arrived -- the server explained how to dip the discs of rice paper into the bowl of hot water, then wrap shrimp or beef, pickled vegetables and greens up in a nice package. The spring rolls came with a great variety of fresh herbs, including perilla, cilantro, ngo gai (sawtooth), laksa and basil.Cha gio in a combo with shredded pork and vermicelli, and plenty of greenery

I usually get beef pho, but we decided to try the pho ga dac biet (special chicken pho), with a well-flavored broth and pieces of everything but the cluck floating around. This is one place where even the chicken has plenty of flavor. Even after throwing bean sprouts and herbs in the pho, there was still a huge pile of greenery left on the table. We kept dipping the rice paper wrappers in water, adding herbs and chili sauce, and rolling them up with pickled carrots and daikon until every shred of beef and shrimp was gone. We'll definitely return to Vietnam Restaurant, and I swear, next time I will get the pickle lemonade.
Vietnam Restaurant
340 W. Las Tunas Dr.
San Gabriel
(626) 281-5577

NomNom Truck: One of our favorite meals-on-wheels so far

As soon as I heard about the Nom Nom Truck, I was excited, because delectable Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches are really only available east of Downtown or in the faraway Westminster area. I know, there's a few places around Silver Lake that have them -- Viet Noodle Bar, Gingergrass -- but they're pricey and it seems a bit precious to order them in a real restaurant. If an outlet of Lee's or another chain were to open a shop in Santa Monica, Westwood or Hollywood, people would go completely nuts, even if they charged double what they charge elsewhere.
Anyway, I was swamped at work when the Nom Nom truck arrived on Wilshire Blvd., but two helpful co-workers were game to check it out and pick one up for me. Justin, Janine and I all got the bbq pork banh mi ($5), so I can't report on the other flavors (lemongrass chicken, deli special, grilled pork, tofu). "The bread was much better than I expected," reported Janine, although she didn't like her lemongrass chicken taco as much.
Indeed the bread was soft and crunchy, the pork was good-enough quality and there were the requisite veggies and cilantro inside. Some traditional ingredient was missing -- hoisin or Maggi sauce? and there was more mayo than usual, but it this sandwich was head and shoulders above what is normally available on Wilshire Blvd.
This truck should be a lesson to other trucks: Keep the menu simple, make it possible to have lunch for $5, and make sure it actually tastes good.
Tip: Make sure to ask for sliced jalapenos if you like it spicy.

Nom Nom Truck rating: 3 1/2 tires out of 4

Follow the Nom Nom Truck on Twitter.

Why tasting Little Saigon is much better with an expert; also, is Vietnamese dog any good?

Chef Danhi explains Vietnamese herbs.

When I saw the email inviting me to tour Little Saigon with chef Robert Danhi, at first I thought I was being invited to visit the real Saigon! But when I read the email more carefully and realized it was Little Saigon in Westminster, I figured the OC would be a lot easier to fit into my schedule. Chef Danhi, who wrote the James Beard-award nominated cookbook Southeast Asian Flavors, also gives culinary tours of Little Saigon, focusing on all three regions of Vietnamese cooking. I went along with several other food writers on a custom tour with Danhi Saturday, and learned a lot more about Vietnamese food than you'll get from just stopping by Golden Deli.
At our first stop, Lee's Sandwiches, we learned that their banh mi aren't the best to be had but their iced coffee is killer. Plus, it's a good place to pick up makings for your own sandwiches, like pate, shredded vegetables, and $1 baguettes.

Fresh crawfish at Thuon Phat market try to crawl right into the seafood boil mix.

Next up was Thuon Phat Market, an immense and immaculate supermarket, where a tour guide came in seriously handy. We started by sampling all the varieties of beef jerky at Vua Kuo Bo, including curry and barbecue.
With Danhi, you don't just get a cursory look at the cuisine -- we learned how to tell which fish sauce is the fishiest, which brand of condensed milk to avoid, and which brand of noodles are preferable. We also got an introduction to the huge variety of Vietnamese herbs like the nasty-smelling fish mint, la lop, pandan leaf, loksa leaf and fresh turmeric -- my new favorite is the lovely purple perilla.
Next, at Dong Phuong Tofu, we tried still-warm soymilk and freshly-made tofu.


Bun cha Hanoi -- barbecued pork patties and pork belly with rice noodles and condiments

Then it was on to Hanoi Restaurant. Chef Danhi demonstrated his recipe for shaking beef, then we tried the restaurant's specialties of pho, pork patties with noodles, square Hanoi spring roll and shrimp with fried yams. Our tour ended with a taste of Vietnamese yogurt, which is really creamy and perfectly tangy, but since it's made with sweetened condensed milk, is more of a dessert treat than a breakfast food.
Danhi's not Asian (he's been married to a Malaysian woman for 20 years), but his enthusiasm for the foods of Southeast Asia is contagious. You could do your own tour by following our itinerary, but I'd recommend one of his Little Saigon tours for anyone who wants to get a deeper understanding of Vietnamese food.

What else we learned: Which country serves the best dog?
Finally, you won't find any dog in Westminster, but yes, dog is served in Vietnam. Danhi favors Korean dog dishes over Vietnamese though. He has a philosophical approach to being a carnivore: "Once you take an animal's soul, what difference does it make what animal it is?" However, he qualifies, "I wouldn't eat my cat though, I love my cat."

See more photos from Little Saigon here.

Noodle World takes a space age trip to Asia

Noodle World's peaked ceiling brings a googie feel to a pho or chow mein meal.

I love discovering new pockets of the San Gabriel Valley, because it's more like the retro land time forgot than the rest of the L.A. area. Hundreds of perfectly-preserved mid-century buildings line the valley's wide boulevards, completely bypassed by the groovy train. Alhambra's Noodle World isn't one of the more distinguished diner designs around, but at least it has preserved the original Bob's Big Boy statue as a nod to the original tenant.

The high-ceilinged dining room has space age aspirations, and the menu features a vast selection of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and Thai noodle dishes of the same approximate quality as the comfort food at Bob's Big Boy. Like the best diners, it's open late (til 1 am) when the platters of slightly greasy noodles and bowls of credible pho seem to make the most sense. Noodle World is like the Farmer's Market of Asian restaurants -- not the best representation of any one cuisine, but where else can you find them all in one spot? My spicy seafood spaghetti (above) didn't hail from any particular country, but the combination of surimi, shrimp, calamari and mussels tossed with a slurry of Sriracha sauce was a pretty good riff on my own pan-Asian spaghetti creation. My son Sam has recently acquired a taste for pho, so he went straight for the rare beef model, while Matt wanted "something like ramen, only without soup," so I steered him to the yakisoba with pan-fried pork and vegetables. You gotta love a menu that has a section called Frozen Monster; Noodle World shares space with a yogurt and boba place that offers a staggering array of slushies, boba, yogurt and shaved ice with Asian-style toppings.
Tip: Save room for a boba drink -- the tapioca balls have the perfect amount of texture and give. This is also a good place for kids, and they serve beer. It's cash only, but there's an ATM inside.
Noodle World
700 West Valley Blvd.
Alhambra
(626)293-8800

Good Girl Dinette: First Look

I checked out the soft opening of Good Girl Dinette Thursday night, and it seems like a promising addition to Highland Park, which has few non-Hispanic food options. My camera battery failed so photos will have to come another time. The Vietnamese comfort food concept was interesting, mostly Vietnamese but with a few diner twists like coconut bread pudding and chicken curry pot pie. Here's a few notes I left on Chowhound:
Owner/chef Diep Tran founded Blue Hen in Eagle Rock, which I had never tried. Good Girl puts a little twist on straight-up Vietnamese food, giving it a "diner" twist. The space is modern and airy, just down the street from Antigua Bread in the heart of Highland Park. Right now they're serving an abbreviated menu while they get their sea legs. We started with crispy rice cakes with scallion tofu ($4.50), a nice light appetizer with good soy/sesame oil flavor. The diner side was represented by two pot pies ($10) -- we had the cauliflower curry which was indeed comfort food, with a flaky biscuit crust and mild vegetarian filling. They were serving either vegetarian or chicken pho ($9), and we tried the vegetarian, which could use another jolt of flavor. But it's pretty hard to make good pho without beef, so that wasn't too surprising. Dessert was a really nice round of coconut bread pudding with whipped cream, not heavy or overly sweet like so many bread puddings. There will be some meatier offerings on the expanded menu, like beef stew and braised pork. The closest comparison is Viet Noodle Bar in Atwater, but prices are a bit more reasonable the food is somewhat heartier.
Banh mi are $7 but they come with fries or slaw, so that seems reasonable.
Good Girl Dinette
110 N. Ave. 56
Highland Park

Good Girl Dinette opens Friday in Highland Park

"The American diner meets Vietnamese comfort food" is the tagline of the new Good Girl Dinette from the Blue Hen's original co-owner Diep Tran. I'm excited to have another choice for lunch and dinner in Highland Park, and I hope she plans to open for breakfast as well.
The menu will feature stews, sandwiches, hearty soups, rustic rice dishes and homemade pies -- a modern take on Vietnamese comfort food, using local, organic, sustainable and seasonal foods.
Hours will be:
Tues-Thurs (dinner only) 6-10pm,
Fri (dinner only) 6-11pm
Sat & Sun (lunch and dinner) 11am-11pm
Closed Mondays

Good Girl Dinette
110 North Avenue 56
Highland Park

Pho Minh: worth braving the wilds of El Monte

This is what you need when it's cold and drizzly: Pho dac biet at Pho Minh

I'll have to admit I had never been to South El Monte before the recent wave of pho adulation hit the Internets. It's not much farther at all than San Gabriel or Rosemead, and yet South El Monte has a somewhat different, Wild West sort of feeling. Driving up Garvey towards the pho zone, first you come to Alice's Palace, a rickety dive bar with broken beer taps which seems like it should be hanging on to the border someplace like Needles or Nogales. Next is one of the more rustic trailer parks I've seen outside of Fontana. Then, on the other side of the street -- bam! A two story pagoda-style strip mall filled with Vietnamese restaurants and just the sort of smoky, louche cafe where several people were recently shot a few miles away. C'est depayisant! But enough with the El Monte travelogue...Pho Minh was the destination.

Degas meets South El Monte in the Saigon mural on the wall at Pho Minh

Tucked away at the back of a pagoda-less strip mall, Pho Minh was bigger and emptier than I had imagined from reading the ecstatic reviews from the likes of Exilekiss and J. Gold. But they do make an unquestioningly good bowl of pho for just $6 or so. If you're feeling adventurous, as I was, get the special, which is full of probably more sliced meatballs than you'll be able to eat, as well as tripe, tendon and rare beef. Or you can just go with the rare beef, because frankly, the tripe doesn't taste like much at all. But the broth is nicely fragrant, there's tons of vegetables and it's just generally an excellent bowl of pho. Cha gio egg rolls were thick, crispy and meaty, and I also loved the strong iced coffee, which had a strong chicory note. I'm not likely to get back to El Monte for a while, but if I do, it's going to be hard to tear myself away from Pho Minh. Unless, of course, I need a game of pool, and a stiff, chemical-tasting margarita at Alice's.
Pho Minh
9646 E. Garney #108
South El Monte
626-448-8807

Viet Noodle Bar: Austerely stylish

Bun thang with organic chicken

It's not always easy to settle on the right spot for lunch around Silver Lake or Echo Park, especially if you've been to Gingergrass once too many times. Viet Noodle Bar strikes the right balance between taco-stand casual and more formal places like Vermont -- but its pure, clean Vietnamese dishes might be more suited to ladies who lunch than to the heartier eaters. Banh mi are tasty but tiny

Since Viet Noodle expanded into the space next door, it has added several new sandwiches and noodle dishes to the menu, but I'm not sure what ever happened to the wrap 'n roll concept Viet was playing around with earlier. Instead of pho, we tried bun thang, with organic chicken, herbs, egg and assorted other goodies ($9.00). It's not as rich as pho, but light and flavorful enough on a cool and cloudy day, especially with a shot of sriracha sauce. The whitefish banh mi is rather petite at $6.75, but the fish's curry sauce provides the sandwich with a good jolt of flavor. Dessert of housemade tofu with ginger syrup (above) also makes you feel quite virtuous. Like Aun Deli, Viet Noodle Bar kind of makes me want to stop for pastries or something afterwards to counteract the lightness of it all, but of course, it's probably how we should be eating all the time. Like the cute hipster guy who crashes on your couch but never replenishes the beer supply, Viet Noodle Bar has a few slight annoyances: it's cash only, there's no alcohol and there's no regular hot tea, only caffeine-free, and what's the point of that? But it's full of unfailingly attractive neighborhood folks, it's stylish and spare, and while it's certainly not cheap, the food is mostly quite good. And that's enough for a pleasant lunch on a blustery day.