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DineOut
by
Shelley Barnes
Moaning
at Mo Mong
With
delight, that is.
This chic Montrose hideaway is an uptown Vietnamese
dream.
It’s
easy to miss Mo Mong. Squeezed into a narrow shopping
strip behind Montrose’s Hollywood Video, the locale—even
with its Westheimer address—isn’t exactly
conspicuous. Once you spot it, though, it’ll embed
itself forever in your long-term memory. And that’s
before you sample the food.
Yes,
I admit it, I’m a pushover for olive green anything,
so Mo Mong’s façade off the large parking
lot (once I finally spotted it) gave it instant credibility.
I just assume that any place cool enough to paint their
building olive green had to be at least as creative
with its cuisine. And it is.
Mo
Mong means “to dream” in Vietnamese, which
is most apropos for this urbane hideaway, which has
been serving since 1997. Owner Toan Hoang dreamed of
opening Mo Mong since 1975, when he and his family moved
here from Vietnam. Toan’s son Viet plays double
duty as manager and designer and, true to its name,
has created a dream-like décor. This long, narrow
space was once the back storage and dressing area for
the Tower Theater, and Viet has clearly preserved its
theatrical feel. The dramatic space has high, exposed
ceilings and concrete floors that oddly produce an almost
cozy, whimsical ambiance. A small, intimate bar dominates
the downstairs entry, and dining requires a steep trek
to the second-level dining room. Naked windows allow
great washes of sunbeams to light the room; you may
as well be reading poetry in some New York SoHo loft.
This
airy East-meets-West-Coast quality leaves no questions
why Mo Mong has become the Montrose crowd’s urban
hangout. But that’s not what draws its consistent
following. It’s the Wednesday night $1.75 martinis
and thoroughly extraordinary Vietnamese fare. Extraordinary
because it extends itself beyond the typical boundaries
of Vietnamese restaurants into the realm of creative
fusion cooking. What’s more, the prices are ridiculously
low for lunch (filet mignon for $7.25) and quite reasonable
for dinner.
That
you’ll find classic Pad Thai, vermicelli, and spring
rolls is a given. This is, after all, a Vietnamese restaurant.
But that’s where the similarity stops. Beyond that
it’s “Vietnamese style” nha trang oysters,
delectable lightly fried spheres that are simply perfect
eaten alone, although the lemon dipping sauce makes
a nice, albeit heated, contrast…not that anyone
took the time for a quick dunk. At $5.75 per tapas-sized
plate, order two and call it a meal. Or sample another
wasabi-titled appetizer, this one with the green heat
streaked across mounds of crab cakes. Yes, crab cakes,
Dixie food at its traditional best, in a Vietnamese
setting—and the crab actually outweighs and out-flavors
the cake-like breading. The sheer tenacity of preparing
a perfectly meaty crab cake without even an accidental
shell warrants some reverence…if not envy.
Mo
Mong dishes up authentic Vietnamese banh uot ($6.25),
shrimp and portobello mushrooms wrapped in steamed rice
paper. What differentiates these from classic Chinese
potstickers is the Vietnamese-style steam bath rather
than the traditional Chinese method of sautéing.
This treatment, I’m sorry to say, however true
to Vietnamese form, makes for a rather insipid appetizer
despite the promising ingredients. But not to worry.
A notch up on the menu is banh xeo. What, you ask, is
banh xeo? Tsk…some of us need to catch up on our
Vietnamese. Banh xeo is a tasty little Vietnamese crepe—which
looks suspiciously like an omelet—brimming with
chicken, shrimp, and mushrooms, intended for Vietnamese
fajita-style wrapping in lettuce, with cilantro, mint,
and fresh sprouts.
A
warning to the Vietnamese food-uninitiated: Do not try
to eat this with a fork. Yes, the lettuce makes for
a poor tortilla. I know tortillas, and You, Lettuce,
are no tortilla. Nonetheless, resist the temptation
to employ a utensil and indulge your inner child in
this finger-style mess. The myriad tastes complement
each other like real cream does coffee. And it tastes
even better when eaten with your hands.
Like
a proper Vietnamese restaurant, Mo Mong has its share
of noodles. There are monk noodles, mo mong noodles,
Singapore noodles, da nang noodles—oops, there
I go again. Rest assured, the translations don’t
help in this case since the descriptions sound like
mutant siblings. Rely instead on the knowledge of your
waiter. Ours recommended the dah nang, al dente rice
noodles studded with sautéed beef, shrimp, and
vegetables ($7.95), all simmered in a smooth brown broth
of hoisin, oyster sauce, mushrooms, sugar, and a touch
of cornstarch (which, we later learned, is the secret
ingredient in one of their truly signature dishes).
While you can find similar combinations in other like
establishments, I found myself repeatedly digging back
into the heaping mound despite the creeping feeling
of fullness and the beckoning plates of as-yet unsampled
food.
If
you’re an asparagus lover, you will fall willingly
in love with phu quoc ($6.50), a union of asparagus
and medallions of chicken breast coated with a ginger,
sugar, and soy glaze. Had the chicken not been succulent,
had the asparagus not been cooked to its deep green
yet firm state, that glaze alone would have had a brainwashing
effect. My growing appreciation for this little gem
of a restaurant already had a life of its own, and even
three-day-old fish (which there wasn’t) wouldn’t
have deterred my conviction. But this is moot, since
Mo Mong’s house specialty, the mama khang fish
($12.95) is as fresh as any sushi-quality fish around.
It’s a simple red snapper fillet, lightly battered
and skillet fried to retain its tenderness, topped with
an equally simple mixture of tomatoes, peppers, and
basil. Surrounded by restaurants known for topping their
seafood with interesting shellfish and fruit salsas,
this blatant lack of embellishment served to draw out
each respective flavor—although this simple pleasure
did come with a high price tag.
Up
to this point, I could have safely said that Mo Mong
is a place you should consider frequenting on a regular
basis—you won’t break the proverbial bank
nor tire of its interesting gustatory creations. Up
to this point, however, I had not sampled the red pepper
shrimp. The name didn’t intrigue me, but our waiter
insisted that if we wanted a seafood dish, we couldn’t
go wrong with the red pepper shrimp. This is an understatement.
There is no going wrong with these shrimp, these darling,
perfectly poised crustaceans resting peacefully amid
curls of green and white onion and slivers of garlic.
With complete nonchalance, I ate one. Then I did a double
take. The really obvious kind that only character actors
can get away with, and only in the theater. Now brace
yourself, for I can honestly claim these to be the best
fried shrimp I have ever tasted. The scoop on these
tasty creatures is the “batter,” a mix of
cornstarch and flour, that produces a translucent coating
when lightly wok-fried. I wouldn’t have thought
this could have made such a marked difference from other
shrimp preparations, but it does, enough to make this
the victim of many future food obsessions.
This
idol worship wasn’t coming from just me. My benevolent
editor—who had five minutes earlier suggested that
my use of the “moan factor” in four consecutive
food reviews may be getting stale—was audibly moaning.
Had I not been making my own yummy noises, I would have
gloated. And, in fact, after introducing everyone you
know and like to the creative Vietnamese fusion that
is Mo Mong, you’ll probably find it hard to conceal
your own smugness. It’s not every day you stumble
upon a dream as tasty as Mo Mong.
Mo
Mong, 1201 Westheimer #b, 713/524-5664. Hours are Fri.
& Sat., 11 a.m.–midnight; Mon., 11–10;
Tue.–Thu., 11–11. Wednesday martini night
is 5–11 p.m.
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