Le Soleil

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These final posts of my last mad rush to cram all the Austin restaurants that I've always wanted to try and can afford on my meager post-grad-going-out-into-the-real-world budget before leaving town will be hurried and lacking in details because I'm already in DC and have been here for a month now and need to start updating this blog on DC eats before I give up blogging altogether from being hopelessly behind!

I heard a while back that the couple who owned Sunflower together divorced and that the husband opened up Le Soleil on N. Lamar.  Since I love Sunflower so much, I was naturally curious about how Le Soleil fares in comparison.

The menu is substantially bigger and offers banquet-style meals.  The food was very tasty, however, every dish we had was quite salty.  I prefer Sunflower.


Vietnamese Iced Coffee

Shaken Beef

Vietnamese-style Sweet and Sour Soup

Five Spice Chicken Lunch Special

Fried Soft-shell Crabs

Pork Chop Lunch Special

Bistro B: Another Delicious Vietnamese Food Venue in Dallas

Bistro B

Thanks to my brother's friend's food blog, we made sure to try two highly recommended restaurants in Dallas-Bistro B and Sushi Robata. 

Bistro B has an encyclopedic menu.  We dove right into Jessica's recommendations and ordered 2 BBQ minced pork rolls, 2 BBQ minced shrimp rolls, and a plate of roasted quails.  I also ordered a catfish clay pot and a diced beef fillet with tomato rice. 

I was slobbering all over myself as I stuffed a roll in my mouth and eyed the quail as it arrived...then tore into the quail and eyed the remaining rolls.  This is not the place to pretend you're a refined diner.  The food is too damn good to waste time on maintaining self-composure.  I'm proud to say I ate with GUSTO!

These rolls are different from the standard Vietnamese spring rolls in that instead of rice noodles, the rolls have crunchy, fried egg roll skins!  These are definitely less healthy, but super tasty! The texture is amazing.  It has the sticky pull of the exterior rice wrapper, then a crunchy, flakey interior, and it's all tied together with the creamy peanut sauce.  YUM!

BBQ minced pork rolls and BBQ minced shrimp rolls with peanut sauce

Insides of the pork and shrimp rolls-crunchy fried spring roll skins instead of rice noodles!

The roasted quail is the most delicious quail I've ever tasted!  It's crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.  Its sweet and savory juices penetrate every pore of the quail. 

Roasted Quail

The catfish clay pot was good, but way to salty.  It goes well with white rice.  The diced beef was tender and flavorful, but Sunflower's shaken beef in Austin is still the best version of this dish I've had so far.

Catfish Clay Pot

Diced Beef Fillet with Tomato Rice

The only bad thing about Bistro B is that they definitely use MSG.  I was dreadfully thirsty after the glorious meal!

Chao Vit Thanh Da: Inside the Saigon Mall Food Court in Garland, TX

I had no idea that the Dallas-Metro area has so many Asian commercial centers like a spread out version of Rowland Heights in California!  Just search "Asian Markets Dallas" and you'll get a map of 10 Asian market locations! I recently visited Hong Kong Market Place, Asia World Market, and Saigon Mall. 

Saigon Mall

It was snowing when we arrived at Saigon Mall, so our instincts told us to hit the food court for a hot bowl of pho.  I got caught up in the vareity of Vietnamese eateries and wanted to try everything.  There were 2 or 3 places selling 20 kinds of banh mi!  It's glorious!

Saigon Mall Food Court

Of all the vendors, I picked Chao Vit Thanh Da because they had the most customers.  The 3 of us ordered a beef pho with meatballs and a plate of grilled pork, steamed egg with ground meat and clear noodles, pork skin dusted with peanut powder, salad, and cracked rice.  I wish mall food courts have Vietnamese vendors!  The food at Chao Vit was excellent and the rice combo plate was enormous at only $6. 

Chao Vit Thanh Da

Rice Combo Plate; Beef Pho

Grilled pork, steamed egg with ground meat and clear noodles, pork skin dusted with peanut powder, salad, and cracked rice

I remember that I used to eat around the pork skin because it gave me the creeps, but I got over it this time and found the chewy strands quite delectable with the peanut powder!

Beef Pho

Me So Hungry-Offensive Trailer Art and Name, Good Take on the Banh Mi

When I was a kid growing up in Sugar Land, TX, I've encountered my share of racism. I remember that kids used chime "Japanese, Chinese, Korean" while pulling the muscles around the eyes for various "Asian effects." I can't accept this.

I'm glad to see that other folks see the vulgarity in the marketing concoction of the S. Lamar trailer, Me So Hungry. See first comment: http://www.yelp.com/biz/me-so-hungry-austin

Why would a trailer serve Asian fusion and yet offend the very cultures, from which it takes inspiration? I stopped by the trailer because I was curious about whether the food will meet my low expectations of a food trailer with an Asian woman kneeling in a seductively short qipao.

I ordered the banh mi because it's a deceptively simple food item that so many Vietnamese banh mi stores get wrong as noted on my Battle of the Banh Mi post. Keeping in mind that it's fusion, this was a pretty good banh mi. The BBQ pork is super lean and flavorful. It has a nice firm texture. The pickeled carrots were fresh. This is important because I've had banh mis where the pickeled daikon and carrots were spoiled. I enjoyed the big slices of cucumbers and the sweet cilantro mayo. I would prefer the bread to be slightly smaller and not toasted.

BBQ Pork Banh Mi

So what I don't get is why the owners of this trailer feels the need to have a schtick when they are capable of serving good food. Please reconsider the message you're sending out.

Pho Saigon

Pho Saigon, located inside the Chinatown strip mall on N. Lamar, offers the best of several dishes of their kind in Austin. Apparently, they have several restaurants in Houston, where there's certainly tougher competition, so the "best" here refers strictly to the Austin area.

I'm guilty of ordering Thai tea in Vietnamese restaurants, but Pho Saigon serves up the absolute best Thai tea in Austin. It's creamy and has the perfect amout of sweetness. I don't like how Thai and other Vietnamese restaurants in Austin completely eliminate the taste of tea by over-sweetening this beverage.

Thai Tea

Pho seems like an easy dish to make. Heck, I made it in Paris with great ease, but I dunno why so many places in Austin get it wrong with unfresh ingredients that make you feel queasy at the end of the meal. Pho Saigon knows how to serve a bowl of piping hot pho with decent quality of ingredients. It's respectable compared to some of the ones I've had at other establishments.

I haven't had Vietnamese seafood egg noodles since living in Houston, so I nostalgically ordered it here (#34 Mi Seafood ***ask them to put the soup in a separate bowl so you can eat the noodles dry***). My best friend tried ordering this dish elsewhere and it can't compare to Pho Saigon. The fried garlic makes the noodles super tasty...just don't order this on a date.

Raw Beef Pho (the beef cooks in the hot soup); Mi Seafood

The rice plates here are huge, and they don't skimp on the meats (4 pork chops on my rice!). Although other restaurants provide a side of eggroll with their rice plates, the quality and quantity of the meats are better here. It's not a constant struggle for me to search and cut off excess fat when I eat here. I can also rest assured that Pho Saigon won't give me a plate of burnt meat.

Lemongrass Beef Rice Plate; Pork Chop Rice Plate

Battle of the Best Banh Mi in Austin

Lily's Sandwich used to be incredible. The best. I used to just close my eyes and forget about what's in the head cheese and pate they use in their Dac Biet (Special) banh mi, and lose myself in crunchy, chewy, buttery banh mi ecstasy. Now, you take a bite, and you can't escape from the strange hard chunks from the head cheese and an impossible amount of jalepenos. Quality and quantity of the ingredients have taken a plunge. Which led me to my search for better banh mi.

Lily's Sandwiches: Dac Biet Banh Mi

I read the Austin Chronicle review of Baguette House and thought I found my replacement for Lily's. No such luck. Although Baguette House bakes its own baguettes, the bread did nothing for me. I did not hear the satisfying krrrr krrrr krrrr when I bit down, I didn't see small cracks form on the baked surface as I applied pressure, and I did not see bread dust bounce off the surface of the baguette as I chomped. The baguette was too bready. The grilled beef tasted ok. I wanted more lemongrass flavor. It needed to lighten up a bit...perhaps with a bit of lime juice. As is, the beef just sinks into the bread passively. I didn't taste my friend's BBQ pork banh mi, but she signaled a so-so. The pickled daikon and carrots didn't taste very fresh to me. I bought this in the evening, so maybe it's the leftovers from the day.

Baguette House: Grilled Beef Banh Mi and BBQ Pork Banh Mi

The current winning banh mi is Cafe de Bella next to Hong Kong Market! As you can see from the photo, the baguette is nice and crusty on the outside, and yes, it's chewy on the inside. The amount of butter, meat, and pickled daikon and carrots is proportionate to the bread, and the taste is awesome. I was relieved that the meat they use didn't have alot of the stringy fat that occassionally encircles slices of pork. That makes chewing so much easier.

Cafe de Bella: Grilled Pork Banh Mi

Sunflower

After living in the U.S. for 22 years, my parents prefer Vietnamese food over Chinese food this side of the ocean. Why can't Chinese restaurants in the states prepare a dish without MSG or cornstarch? Show me a dish that's not covered in transparent gooey mess! Cornstarch is used to make the ingredients look fresh and stir-fried dishes look glossy, but to me, it's a sure sign of a lazy chef.

So the Asian cuisine that is to our liking in the U.S. is Vietnamese. There's also an occassional problem with the overuse of MSG, but at least the chefs tend to resist cornstarch.

The family usually goes for pho and banh mi, which all began in Hawaii at My Canh (1152 Maunakea St, Honolulu, HI 96817). That's until we came upon Sunflower in north Austin (8557 Research Blvd # 146, Austin, TX 78758). I suspect that the dishes served here are Northern Vietnamese because the restaurant's forte is in stir-fried dishes (intermingling with southern Chinese cuisine?).

You can not go to Sunflower without ordering Shaken Beef and Lemongrass Tofu. Those two dishes are indispensable. The Shaken Beef is tender with a subtley sweet coating (thin tamarind glaze?), and it comes with lime juice with black pepper on the side. I'm usually not an admirer of tofu because it does not retain flavor. Sunflower proves that tofu can be flavorful. I also love that they use firm tofu.

Shaken Beef

Lemongrass Tofu

All the dishes on Sunflower's menu are safe bets so take your pick after ordering the 2 must-haves.

Vietnamese Iced Coffee

Pineapple Soup with bean sprouts and tomatoes

Seafood Egg Crepe

Sizzling Cod in black bean sauce

Beef and Rice Claypot

Combination Flat Rice Noodle

Five Spice Chicken with salad

Green Beans and Tofu with salad and tofu spring roll