Vietnamese Brunch Pops Up on Melrose with BEP Kitchen

Every other week starting this Sunday (April 21), you can get an awesome Vietnamese multi-course brunch on Melrose. Connie Tran's BEP Vietnamese Kitchen will be popping up at Franco on Melrose. There's only one seating at 11:30 am where you'll partake in an 8-course brunch, mostly served family style, for $37.


I attended a media preview last week, starting my morning with some spiced boiled peanuts. I remember as a kid I loved boiled peanuts and would buy them at the zoo (I think they were meant for the elephants). I just love the texture! Here, suck on the shells a bit to get the flavors!

Chef Connie Tran explained to us the philosophy behind a Vietnamese meal. She said there is always a "water" component, which in our meal was the chao sang: rice porridge, lardon crisps, poached egg, sage brown butter

This one was not served family style but a small individual bowl for everyone. Egg lovers will rejoice over the high egg:porridge ratio here.

After that there will be 1-2 proteins but one of them will always have vegetables. More on that later, though, as she modernizes and expands things a bit with her own take.

Our second course was a beautiful salad of starfruit, fennel, burrata, bibb lettuce with lemon balm dressing

Read more »

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Vietnamese Street Food!

Vietnamese Street Food
by Tracy Lister and Andreas Pohl
Paperback, 208 pages

Wow. I have to say that I didn't know a lot about what sets this Asian cuisine apart before reading this beautiful book. I knew they had great sandwiches that had something to do with pickles and baguettes and that was about the sum total of my shaky understanding of Vietnamese street food. But the book, Vietnamese Street Food, has opened my eyes and my senses to a lively and colourful palette of flavours.

The photos alone are a beautiful adventure to an exotic land, and the recipes are uncomplicated yet bursting with fresh flavours and exciting new combinations of tastes. I am a Vietnamese street food convert. This is one of the most exciting books I have read this year.

 I immediately made some Vegetable Pickle and some Carrot and Daikon Pickle, accompaniments for many street food items, and one of the many dipping sauces provided. Then we were Vietnamese for a week. We had Barbecued Chicken Wings, lovingly marinated in Vietnamese flavours; Marinated Grilled Beef on Noodle Squares; and West Lake Prawn Cakes. Next on the list: one of the famous Banh Mi sandwiches. What a glorious cuisine!

Chapters include:

Chopsticks and Toothpicks - Street Food Culture in Vietnam

About the Recipes

Roll

Grill/Roast

Boil/Steam

Fry

Baguettes/Salads

Sweets

Sauces/Condiments

Glossary

Index

And the book is filled with beautiful photos of the street food and the street culture itself. A exotic vacation in book form!

About the Author
Tracey Lister knows how to shop, cook, and eat in Vietnam. After fifteen years in the Melbourne restaurant scene, Lister took a sabbatical in Hanoi, where she met Jimmy Pham, founder of KOTO, a grassroots charity that helps street kids through vocational training in cooking and serving. Lister stayed on for a few years, setting up accredited training programs for the students. Her time at the charity, along with husband Andreas Pohl, resulted in their first book, KOTO. Lister currently runs a successful cooking school out of Hanoi.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Central Vietnamese Cuisine at Quan Vy Da (Little Saigon, Westminster)

Not too long ago I blogged about the northern Vietnamese food during a Little Saigon North to South tour with Wandering Chopsticks. This was our second food stop, Central Vietnamese cuisine at Quan Vy Da (well, she said it was more South Central). I had been looking forward to this stop all day, because they have banh beo and banh it ram. I'm biased and I declare central my favorite food region of Vietnam, because I love chewy rice cakes!

Yes, my favorite: banh beo chen Vy Da - steamed rice cakes topped with dried shrimp, served with fish sauce ($5.95)

While it may seem a simple dish, it's easy to screw it up by having the rice cake too thick or too dense. The ones at Quan Vy Da were just right for me. You can top it off with pork rinds if you want extra flavor and crunch (and yes, you do).

Read more »

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Whole Baked Catfish at Vietnam House (San Gabriel, CA)

A quick pho trip turned into a lavish meal of whole baked catfish. We just couldn't help ourselves once we saw it on the menu. The whole catfish (around $30-35 depending on the size) came topped with garlic and scallions, the aroma carries to the edge of the table. This is perhaps the tour de force of Vietnam House's menu.

The catfish is served with the usual condiments. Vermicelli noodles, herbs and lettuce and pickled carrots, rice paper to wrap it all in, and fish sauce for dipping. (I keep noticing how in much of Vietnamese food, you don't really eat rice but rice paper, rice noodles, and rice cakes).

Read more »

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Northern Vietnamese Cuisine at Vien Dong (Garden Grove, CA)

To raise money for the earthquake relief efforts in Japan, Wandering Chopsticks led a North to South Vietnamese tour in Little Saigon. I joined her and her readers who had each donated $50 to specific charities for the first parts of the tour. We started at Vien Dong in Garden Grove for Northern Vietnamese food.

While waiting for WC's other readers to arrive, we ordered some Cha Gio (Vietnamese Spring/Egg Rolls). The cha gio here is made with rice paper, which is both crispy yet maintains some chewiness when fried. This is the traditional wrapper used in Vietnam.

Being a long and late day, I had to get some Ca Phe Sua Da. They brought it out in a mini coffee press laying on top of a cup of condensed milk. It wasn't until then that I realize just how much condensed milk is in this drink! No wonder it's so tasty...

We shared an order of Banh Tom which are Vietnamese Shrimp and Yam Fritters with a turmeric batter.

Most of the dishes we tried here were new to me, and among my favorites was the Cha Ca Thang Long (Vietnamese Hanoi-Style Turmeric Fish with Dill)

The best part with going to eat Vietnamese food with WC is of course the knowledge you gain from her. She said that dill is mostly not used in Vietnamese food other than in the Northern part, and this dish originated from a restaurant in Hanoi which became so popular that the street is now named after the restaurant (Cha Ca). Apparently non-Northerners consider using dill strange, but I certainly liked it!
Read more »

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

LA's "Haute" Asian Cuisine? Lukshon vs WP24 vs Red Medicine, Part 3: Red Medicine

When I started doing this series of posts, i debated a while whether or not I will go to Red Medicine. I had gone to their stint at Test Kitchen, but ideally I should try the "final product". However, I just couldn't bring myself to go after their whole drama with the LA Times' reviewer SIV, where they not only kicked her out of the restaurant but also posted her photo online, threatening her position as an anonymous critic. I haven't agreed with many of her reviews lately but that is really beside the point. I found their "revenge" unprofessional and juvenile.

Finally, I decided not to go. I had very little desire to.

The tasting menu at Test Kitchen and their current menu both seemed reasonable at first glance, $40 for the Test Kitchen menu and $21 or less for the protein entrees. It turned out, however, that the portions were quite small.

Many of the dishes we tried were excellent. We all loved the cured amberjack served on french melons, and the pork belly "banh mi".

Fatty and crunchy texture and lovely pickled carrot. I definitely could've used more than one piece of this.
Read more »

reade more... Résuméabuiyad