DineOut

Asian Spa Food
Miss Saigon creates a restful oasis of Vietnamese culinary gentility in the midst of the hectic Village
by E.J. Arnell

Walking into the Miss Saigon Café out of the bustling Village is like finding a restful glade in a busy public park. It is a place to sit down and hide from the rest of Houston. The restaurant is tiny, more cozy than small, and the few windows that line the street are curtained halfway up so that you can’t see the frustrated drivers trying to find parking spots. It is comfortably elegant, with white tablecloths under glass, dark wooden chairs, fresh flowers, and candles on the 15 tables. A wall mural of a Vietnamese street scene (painted by Kermit Eisenhut, no less!) adds pleasantly to the soft mood.

In 1997, Miss Saigon was opened as a small Vietnamese sandwich place, lunch only, in the Village. After many customers requested dinner items and hours, the family operation decided to expand into a restaurant. Last month they introduced another new menu adding a couple items to the favorites along with helpful descriptions of the food.

What impresses me most about Vietnamese cooking is how fresh and healthy the food tastes, yet how delicious it manages to be at the same time. The flavors are mild and the fat content low. The food is pretty. Many of the dishes combine cold with hot, which is interesting to eat because of the temperature differences but also the raw items provide a greater intensity of flavor.

Summer rolls are a wonderful introduction to a Vietnamese meal. I love the way the cold sticky rice noodles and the lettuce seal in the warmth from the grilled shrimp, pork, chicken, or tofu. Their appearance reminds me of inside-out Japanese maki rolls. After picking up a roll with chopsticks and then dipping it into the pineapple nuoc mam sauce, it’s fun to stuff the whole thing into your mouth.

Vietnamese egg rolls are a hands-on project. What a brilliant twist on their northern neighbor’s version. Ask your server for instructions on how to eat this dish. Because a friend of mine introduced these to me a while ago, I felt like a pro, picking up the chilled lettuce leaves, laying down the mint and basil sprigs along with a thin strip of cucumber, strings of carrots and onion, and then adding the crowning glory–the crispy hot egg roll, stuffed with pork, shrimp, crab, and mushrooms. The result should be a tightly wrapped lettuce package with the egg roll in the center. Inevitably, some things fall out when I dip, but they are very delicious.

If you want less work–or grease– try the cold spring rolls, made with lettuce, bean sprouts, noodles, mint, chive, and a choice of filler rolled in soft rice paper and served with spicy peanut sauce. Once you start eating these, it’s hard to move on to other things because they are so tasty.

A satisfying lunch or light dinner is a bowl of vermicelli. Precooked, cold rice noodles, fresh bean sprouts, shredded lettuce, cucumbers, and carrots are the base ingredients. Then you choose a grilled item (pork, beef, chicken, egg roll, tofu, or shrimp) to top the chilliness. I love the grilled tofu option; it is dense with a slight crispness.

The chef, Sue Tran, explained that the Vietnamese like to eat their food family style with a variety of dishes in the middle of the table and small bowls in front of each diner. She also said that they like to balance the flavors on the table, including salty and tangy along with rice and a sauté. We followed her instructions and stacked our table.

We had the caramel salmon hot pot to fulfill the salty requirement, the hot and sour soup for tangy, and the spicy lemongrass chicken for our sauté. After speaking with Sue, now I know why the hot pot takes 15 minutes to prepare. They cook it in a metal pot on the stove top, first caramelizing the ingredients: fish sauce, honey, ginger, onion, and bell peppers. Then they add the salmon, put on the lid and slowly steam the fish for a few minutes, and then remove the lid to let the fish cook through. They bring the whole pot to the table so the gooey sauce is right there for the taking. I scooped up the rich sauce, some fish, and vegetables onto my rice. The salmon was so tender–together with the spicy sweet sauce, it was sensational.

The spicy lemongrass chicken is like an Asian curry. The sauce tastes good ladled onto the sticky white rice topped with sesame seeds. This dish is a little plain, but nicely presented. The chicken, red peppers, white onion, and sprigs of green onion, and white chicken meat float colorfully on top of the brown, lemongrass chili sauce.

The hot and sour soup was a surprise. I am so used to the Chinese version, that after peeking into the bowl I clarified with the server that she had brought the correct item. There were sliced tomatoes, okra, silver taro, along with bean sprouts, chicken, and shrimp in the clear broth. After an initial serving all around, the soup sat on the table as we family-styled our way through dinner, and I had another bowl toward the end. By this time it had cooled, but I actually liked it better. It was refreshing after the saltiness of the salmon and zippiness of the lemongrass chicken.

Miss Saigon offers a large selection of entrees, some familiar, like the beef ginger and vegetarian stir fry, but I am intrigued by the Vietnamese crepe, described on the menu as "a large rice flour crepe stuffed with a combination of sautéed pork, shrimp, bean sprouts, yellow bean –assorted, with fresh lettuce and herbs."

When deciding on dessert it was a tossup between the banana flambé and the coconut crème brûlée. I have had many flavors of crème brûlée, but this is the first time that I have seen it done with coconut, so I had to try it. They put a thick layer of sugar on top–similar to that of a candy apple, so that there is a nice crunch. I really liked the coconut flavor; the custard was thick and rich. It was an appropriate ending to a wonderful meal.

I always feel satisfied when I eat Vietnamese food, as though I’ve given my body the proper vitamins and protein, but allowed my tongue to have fun as well.

Miss Saigon Café

5503 Kelvin Street (in the Rice Village)

713/942-0108

Hours: Mon.—Thu., 11 a.m.—9 p.m.; Fri.—Sat., 11 a.m.—9:30 p.m.