Saigon savoir faire

AS dragons run and dance down Bolsa Avenue in Westminster during this Saturday's Tet parade celebrating the lunar New Year, the restaurants of Little Saigon will be opening their doors to floods of revelers. Many of the thousands of Vietnamese Americans who throng to the district for the holiday carnivals, concerts and events will head for favorite places that cook the regional dishes they grew up eating. Others will follow the buzz to check out the latest developments in this lively dining scene.

And lately, those changes have been remarkable.

Fresh energy and style-savvy creativity are flowing through the Vietnamese restaurant community. The sweet-salty heat-tinged complexity of the cuisine is showing up in classier preparations than we've ever seen in Southern California as owners and chefs insist on higher-quality ingredients and improve their cooking standards as well as the likability of their restaurants.

Many of the Vietnamese restaurants that have opened recently in Westminster and surrounding communities seem more connected to today's world than to the past. For example, Grand in Garden Grove, a classy boite specializing in chicken dishes, uses only free-range birds. Fountain Valley's Aysya promises fusion food and Le V, in the same town, boasts a wall of wines that bisects its bistro-Moderne dining room.

These trend-conscious ventures resemble the old-fashioned minimalist pho shops and sandwich joints of the immigrant community's early years about as much as Wolfgang Puck's edgy new Red Seven resembles Musso & Frank Grill.

"People's expectations are different now," says Cecilia Le, a former financial analyst who owns 6-month-old Le V Cuisine. Her customers tend to be business professionals who enjoy wines with her menu of Vietnamese and fusion dishes and shareable small plates such as small spring lamb chops arranged on blue cheese-spiked potato "fondue" or salmon carpaccio sprinkled with crispy capers and chives. They're not averse to culinary experimentation, Le says.

Contemporary chic

OTHER restaurateurs must share her perception that restaurant-goers will support ambitious, pricier places in Little Saigon. In 2006 the Dang family, which has had great success with its casual cafe, Brodard Nem Nuong, went for the big time, opening Brodard Chateau, a beautifully appointed, bi-level, 8,000-square-foot restaurant with a full bar, fireplace and Euro-Asian menu.