Vientiane Café |
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4728 Baltimore Avenue (215) 726-1095 BYOB (cash only)
Rice noodles, broccoli, crinkle-cut carrots and bean sprouts cling in cloisters, revering naturally campestral and rural proclivities. Simple sauces, simpler ingredient mixtures and the simplest of presentations create special comestibles: casual cultural diversity. One enters this shy-of-twenty-feet wide shebang by passing under a blue awning via a miniscule vestibule. “OPEN” says the sign on the framed glass door.
Be adventurous here. Avoid the chicken, beef and shrimp. Opt instead for kalange root, kafir leaves and chili lemon grass. All appear in Tom Yum vegetarian soup ($2.95). As do chunks of carrots, onions, red bell peppers and mushrooms. The liquid is nasty-opaque orange speckled with Asian crimson pepper flakes. Tofu squares bobble on top as your soup spoon meanders the surface. The steaming broth ignites your mouth. Swallowing is followed by double vision. You swoon with a shudder as your stomach anticipates collywobbles. Finally your mind mows the lemon grass and disregards the momentary dyspepsia, in favor of calming warmth. The kalange root grows esculent between one’s lips, and flowers into exotic spiciness. Order the Tom Yum to be served with Fresh Steamed Spring Rolls ($3.95), four soft rice paper cigars filled with vegetables, verdant herbs and vermicelli. A bite balances the heated exchange of the soup with the soft, fresh, minted fragrance. Doused in sweet peanut sauce, the “seasoning” changes from Summer to Spring. Nor can you miss by beginning with mellow creamy Coconut Soup ($2.95) in which carrot strips bathe sweetly with onions and crisp broccoli in white chalky milk. Lingering dreamy aftertastes abound.
The Duck arrives soaked in tawny Tamarind sauce, with citrus-soy overtones. All is smothered by shiitake and Portobello mushroom caps. A puddle of creamed emerald spinach spreads into a mound of Jasmine rice on your plate. Gorgeous gormandizing. An Order, a judgment in equity and an obligation for specific performance: eat the Banana/Chocolate Spring Roll ($5.95) for dessert! An egg roll shall appear whose insides most resemble a Thai-Laotian cannoli-banana-split. A quartered strawberry stands guard beside it, saluting to a thick, peachy, apricot and raspberry sauce of scandalous sensuality. You will fall in love. Please be early for dinner or lunch. Lines begin to form so that the sidewalk is as crowded as the restaurant within an hour of its opening. When I called for a reservation (which is never taken: first come, first served), I spoke over the phone to a young Asian hostess who seemed very busy. She hurriedly and breathlessly replied, “Could you hold me just one second, please?” I didn’t dare reply.
SILE ET PHILOSOPHUS ESTO |
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Copyright 2006 Richard Max Bockol, Esq. | Back |