Each person individualizes the meal, enclosing grilled bits in pliable rice paper or lettuce with fresh herbs chosen from the accompanying rau son, a platter heaped with lush sprays of herbs and greenery. The ritual, Vu says, is reminiscent of how families gather together at the table "and take time sharing a meal and conversation."
The restaurant's location is the Anaheim Colony Historic District. Vu has designed the room and decorated it with furniture and art from her homeland to give diners the feeling they're in a comfortable Vietnamese home.
Vu isn't the only restaurateur settling outside Little Saigon's center. Rents are high there, and on weekends traffic clogs the intersection of Bolsa Avenue and Brookhurst Street where the huge Asian Garden and Asian Village malls face off. So the hottest new area is south of Bolsa and along Brookhurst through Westminster and Fountain Valley all the way to the freeway.
Quan Hop is there. Its parent restaurant, Quan Hy, one of Little Saigon's breakout restaurants, was a revelation with its professionally designed decor and attentive service. Family spokesman Bon Ton says he wanted to feel proud when introducing his mother's refined, central-style Vietnamese dishes to American friends.
Sure enough, Quan Hop, with a similar architect-designed, vaguely earthy look, attracts a diverse crowd. The place sparkles, and the flavors of its pan-regional food create new devotees of the cuisine every day.
Also joining the neighborhood is Pholicious, a spic-and-span pho shop with lettuce-green walls on a side street a few blocks from Brookhurst. The kitchen arranges its pho garnishes like a little bouquet rather than the usual unruly heap of vegetation. It turns out crowd-pleasing shrimp pho and chicken pho as well as the familiar beef variety. Co-owners Danny Buu and Jonathan Bao Huynh say their best advertising results have come from MySpace.
"We are the crossover generation," says Hunyh, 31, who arrived here at age 3. "We take ideas from both cultures." Their venture may be a practice run for a franchise. Look for Pholicious No. 2 in Irvine later this year.
Amazon, with its wall of water at the entryway and its collection of flat-screen TVs nearly covering the walls of the room, is a sort of Vietnamese sports bar hidden on a narrow road off Bolsa. Its kitchen turns out food that's way better than it needs to be.
