Galley Girl – She's in Your Kitchen

The essence of the average Brodard customer, if there is one, may be a hybrid of practical frugality and old world expectation. Someone who will drive across town to save fifty cents on spring rolls but who expects the bun bo hue to be like grandma made in her rural, Ngu Binh-adjacent mountainside hamlet. Then there are the Viet foodies buzzed on cafe sua da looking for a spring roll fix.

 Is social media big in Little Saigon? Yes, but don’t underestimate the power of the grapevine: my friend’s mom has a viral word-of-mouth network that makes Twitter look like two cans with a string.

Roast duck salad.

Which is why building your customer base here is so brutal, or so easy if you are Brodard Restaurant. Before you even sit, you will be tempted by their loss leader: nem nuong cuon, the roasted pork spring rolls they sell by the thousands per day between this and their other more formal location, Brodard Chateau.

They’re being made behind the counter, flying out of the kitchen like rice paper UFOs, high tailing it out the door carnival and party-bound in huge foil bins and dissappearing at every table. If you don’t get an order,  you may be the only one.

The diaphanous rice paper is tautly rapped around cool cucumber, mild green onion, crispy won ton skins and succulent pork sausage delivering a package that is at once crunchy, herbal, savory and spicy. The warm congee-like dipping sauce cooks for hours on the range. It’s too bland for those who live and breathe nuoc cham, but brightens up considerably with a spoonful of chili sauce from the condiment caddy.

Spring loaded.

The banh khot appetizer here is every bit as good as those at the ambiance-challenged Nha Hang Van Restaurant across the street  where they specialize in them, but with a considerable surroundings upgrade. These tiny, crispy coconut milk and turmeric- scented rice flour crepes with shrimp and bean sprouts arrive in an actual boat full of Vietnamese basil and other herbs.

The goi gà  with lean chicken is delicious, but the goi vit quay, roast duck salad, that much better. It’s moist  flavorful meat and crackling shards of golden brown skin over a bed of cabbage, carrot,  onion and fragrant  rau ram is complimented by a tangy umami-permeated vinaigrette, caramelized shallots,  crushed peanuts and  airy shrimp chips. 

 Though the pretty, casual atmosphere is one of breezy, sky lit space, elegant live orchids and lucky laughing Buddhas, the method of clearing at Brodard is bussers throwing dirty plates into table side bus carts like Greek plate smashers at a Plaka cafe. You’ve got to roll with it.

Brodard Restaurant 9892 Westminster Ave. Garden Grove 92844 714.530.1744. http://brodard.net.

For a time in the eighties my brother and I carpooled to Santa Ana College in my Dodge Omni, and later my Buick Skyhawk. Both were fire engine red. This brought out our many aesthetic differences. Even then I could take only so much of ethereal Cockteau Twins and Dead Can Dance in the tape deck and he had an olfactory aversion to my Vietnamese food fetishes.

I’d pick him up for class after lunch. “You’ve been in Little Saigon, I can smell it.” he’d say as a blast of heady lemongrass and pungent nuoc mam assaulted him when he opened the passenger side door.

It’s twenty years later and little has changed. My brother still loves 4AD bands and I have a car permeated with the lovely reek of  pâté during frequent bánh mì sprees. Here just a few of my current Little Saigon obsessions.

Sandwich + newspaper = happiness.

Bánh Mì Thit

The three-for-five deal assures perpetual lines at the orderly, utilitarian Bánh Mì Saigon, and sheer chaos at the popular, third world Bánh Mì & Che CALI chain. For a more refined sandwich, head to the Parisian-pretty Top Baguette where the Lemongrass Beef sandwich is superlative.   Top Baguette 9016 Bolsa Ave. Westminster 714 379-7726.

Banh Mi & Che CALI regulars.

Roasted Pork Spring Rolls

Lushly lit and filled with the zen sounds of Buddha Bar, comely Brodard Chateau is known for its massive take-out business built on roasted pork spring rolls. It’s no wonder: they are portable, snackable and come with house-made special sauce sauce unlike the usual nuoc cham.  Still, in Little Saigon’s plushest fine dining spot, it’s tempting to dine in.  Try the bánh khot,  sizzling, turmeric-stained coconut-scented rice flour crepes no bigger than a communion wafer with an impression that holds minced shrimp, mung bean and pork. Brodard Chateau 9100 Trask Ave. Garden Grove, 92844. 714 899 8273.

Iced Coffee

Café Sua Da used to fuel me through many a day answering phones at the County of Orange Probation Department, Westminster branch. (note to future parents: Cross Ghengis and Attila off list of potential baby names.) Van’s Bakery chain is my  fave. Why? Whole beans, freshly ground, Nestle’s Sweetened Condensed Milk and the  house-whipped cream they use to frost cakes piped  in the middle of the ice layer.  They stock  many permutations of the eminently snackable thit kho bò,  sweet sesame-flecked shards or  fiery,  curry coated  chunks of beef jerky.  Pâté chaud is always available at check-0ut: irresistable hot pastry puffs with curried chicken or pork inside. Van’s Bakery, 14346 Brookhurst St. Garden Grove, CA 714 839-1666.

Soup's on!

Mì Quang and Bún Bò Huê

Pho is lovely with it’s anise scented  broth and elegant, paper thin  filet mignon slices, but Huê-style soups from Vietnam’s mountainous central region provide long-term sustenance.  At the homely, economical Ngu Binh, the proprietress doles out each bowlful individually to assure equality for all. Maybe if you’re born in central Vietnam, you bleed bún bò huê, but for me, it’s an aquired taste. Swarthy beef sausages, blood cake and fiery, chili spiked broth equal a sinus cleansing, delicious good time.  Mi Quang is another matter entirely. This is south central Vietnam’s grandmotherly fare: spicy chicken and pork stock poured over the bowl of steaming, wide yellow rice noodles rife with shrimp, chicken morsels, banana blossom, bean sprouts and shrimp paste and crushed peanuts. It goes down your gullet as easily as a middle schooler slides down the Bazooka Bowl attraction at Wild Rivers. Ngu Binh Restaurant 14072 Magnolia St., #107 Westminster, 714.903.6000.

Mango madness.

Banana Fritters and Pickled Mango

Located at the corner of Bolsa and Mag, Trái Cây Ngon specializes in one type of fruit: tropical. Jackfruit the size of  armadilloes are prepped in back to extract  their  soft, date-sized fruits that taste of custard.  Juicy longan, perfumy lychee and dragon fruit are all fresh and delicious. At checkout, don’t miss the chili-laced pickled mango and molten banana fritters.8920 Bolsa Ave., Westminster. 714.894.5852.

In the banh mi diaspora of Little Saigon, opinions on where to find the best baguette are as authoritative and polarized as HuffPost and the Heritage Foundation’s combative takes on global warming. And it’s not just the bread. At a local salon, I’ve seen trash talking sessions about sandwich fillings get as hot as a Conair Infiniti dryer.

 A teeming social hub well-respected in the cult of the Vietnamese sandwich, Tip Top’s is crammed with loyal congregants gossiping and reading Nguoi Viet. Bread comes out of the massive ovens hourly creating a market so competitive that attempting to sell a cooled baguette in this neighborhood is as dismal a prospect as trying to trade mom’s Weight Watchers protein bar for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos at the grade school lunch tables. 

A Tip Top baguette has a scored and slightly bubbled outer crust that shatters on contact like a pane of sugar on crème brûlée leaving shards of flakiness in its wake. The core, still warm from the oven, soaks up the juicy, fat marbled savory pork  tangled with cool, sweet pickled daikon, shaggy carrot slivers, fresh cilantro sprigs and jalapeño spheres. The experience is at once crispy, spicy, warm and crunchy. And at $3.45, the price is as sweet as the cafe sua da.

A shrill bell channeling an elementary school’s fire alarm sounds before your order number is read. Forget the uninspired American-style sandwiches and leave the Patisserie to Pierre’s Boulangerie down the street, but hustle to the take-out counter: that baguette won’t be warm forever. Tip Top’s Sandwiches 14094 Brookhurst St. Garden Grove. 714.530.9239. Lunch for two, $8.00,  food only.