24 AMERICANWAY
JANUARY 1 2009
F O O D
as well as in a corridor along Story Road.
For pho, try Pho Bang, or sample authen-
tic southern Vietnamese cuisine at Cao
Nguyen. Asian Garden offers a variant on
seven courses of beef: nine courses of fish,
widely regarded as the best progression of
fish courses in theBayArea. And formore-
authentic flavors laced with homemade
sauces, tryVungTau restaurant.
Movingup theWestCoast, Seattle’sLittle
Saigon differs from San Jose’s in that it is
more concentrated; however, it’s still not
as large as Orange County’s. According to
LeslieKelly, restaurant critic for the
Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
, Seattle’s Little Saigon
fomentedVietnamese culture in supermar-
ketsandstripmallscontainingdozens, ifnot
hundreds, of businesses and restaurants.
The largest and most notable Little
Saigon is in California; it fans out into the
cities of Westminster and Garden Grove
and also into parts of Fountain Valley and
Santa Ana in Orange County. In fact, Or-
angeCounty is home to the largest popula-
tionofVietnameseoutsideofVietnam.
InWestminster, you can find a series of
murals depicting Vietnamese folklore that
are tucked deep in the Asian Village, a
vast collection of businesses and a cultural
courtyard complete with a 12-foot marble
statue of Confucius and his disciples in
the New Saigon Mall. Orange County’s
LittleSaigon isperhaps theonlyarea in the
country where diners can sample a variety
of dishes from each of Vietnam’s three re-
gions. And Vietnamese food in the United
States is often better than it is inVietnam.
“Because we are a wealthier country, there
are a lotmore resources, and cooks can af-
ford to use better ingredients,” Vietnam-
ese food blogger and historianWandering
Chopsticks says.
AtThienAnRestaurant inGardenGrove,
you can find bo 7 mon
(
seven courses of
beef), which is a selectionof beef dishes of-
ten served at weddings. And at PhoThanh
Lich inWestminster, you can enjoy pho—
the beef soup served with side plates filled
with bean sprouts, onions, basil, peppers,
and wedges of lime — with thick slices of
filetmignon. For northernVietnamese cui-
sine, try Vien Dong in Garden Grove, and
for cuisine from Vietnam’s central region,
there’sQuanHy inWestminster. To experi-
ence the sensuality of southern cuisine, try
Brodard in Garden Grove, and, finally, for
southmeets south, try Rockin’ Crawfish in
Westminster, a Cajun twist on Vietnamese
from a restaurateur who became smitten
withCajunwhile living inHouston.
Unlike it is in Orange County, the Viet-
namese community in San Jose, California
— theU.S. citywith the largest Vietnamese
population— isn’tconcentrated. “TheLittle
Saigon inSanJose iskindof a funny thing,”
foodwriterNguyen says. “There isn’t a nu-
cleus on one street, where it’s jam-packed
withVietnamese shops and restaurants. It’s
moredispersed.”
Instead, there are pockets of Vietnamese
in south San Jose and just east of city hall,
resides in the city’s International District,
which is dominated by Chinatown. In the
1980s, thedistrict’sboundarystartedcreep-
ing east of Interstate 5 and north of South
Lane Street, and a Little Saigon with a
concentration of Vietnamese-owned busi-
nesses and restaurants, includingdozens of
pho shops, formed. “They range fromhole-
in-thewall places to fairlynice, upscale set-
tings,”Kelly says.
For more high-end dining, there is
Monsoon on Capitol Hill, one of Seattle’s
wealthiest districts. Monsoon incorporates
Adiner enjoying vermicelli noodles at VungTau
