USE THIS ONE
@Steve - Another update on Bếp Việt, this one extremely, extremely wordy. Steve, if you don’t have time to read the whole thing (as few will), please do jump down to the last few paragraphs where I discuss a possible group lunch.
Honestly, I’m a little reluctant to talk about Bep Viet too much in a public forum, as I’m afraid that true popularity would overwhelm them. As far as I can tell, the owners, husband and wife Elaine and Michael Phan, might be the sole people cooking and serving (there are people busing the tables). As a result, the service can be slow (though never less than gracious and friendly), and large crowds might overwhelm them.
But, whatever, they seem like really nice people and deserve what success they can achieve. Plus, they now have 150 reviews on Yelp with an astronomical 4.5 Yelp rating. So the word appears to be getting out despite the complete dearth of reviews by professional food critics. It’s perhaps not surprising that critics’ reviews are not necessary for success for a restaurant with great food, reasonable prices, elegant decor, and a hushed environment where you can hear your dining companions even if they aren’t shouting
Based on my prior meals there, I can recommend the following dishes very highly. This is by no means a complete listing, just some of the dishes that we have really liked.
(1) Bún gà chanh nướng chả giò - Grilled lemon grass chicken served over bun (rice vermicelli), with copious quantities of lettuce, shredded carrots, cucumbers, and fish sauce. I’ve seen this described as “Vietnamese chicken salad,” which might explain why it’s served with fried spring rolls. Toni orders this probably more than any other dish here, maybe because it’s a “salad.” This is in almost every Vietnamese restaurant, but this is a superb version.
[NOTE: I’m struggling to use the Vietnamese names, which requires a lot of Googling since I don’t know any Vietnamese. But truth be told, we usually just order by the number. This is #31 on Bep Viet’s menu]
You can get it in a healthier version without the deep fried spring rolls, as pictured here.
(2) Bánh Xèo, Vietnamese seafood crepe. Banh xeo is Toni’s favorite Vietnamese dish and Bep Viet’s version is her favorite of all she’s tried. [#7 on the menu]
(3) Bánh mì bò kho - Vietnamese beef stew with beef brisket, beef shank, beef tendon, and carrots, served with a banh mi baguette - This dish tastes like really really good American beef stew and is surprisingly common on Vietnamese menus. This is an outstanding example of this dish. [#22 on the menu]
(Steve, years ago, you directed me to the first version I ever had at Hai Duong in Eden Center, which I am still very grateful for, as it started me down a path to a much greater appreciation for the European influences on Vietnamese food).
(4) Cơm tấm bì chả sườn cha- a platter with a grilled pork chop, shredded pork, op la eggs, and broken rice. This has to be in the top rank of the world’s comfort foods and this is an outstanding version. [#34 on the menu]
(5) Mì xào don (often described as mì xào giòn in other Vietnamese restaurants), which is beef, chicken, scallops, shrimp, and mixed veggies over wonderfullly crispy and crunchy pan fried noodles. This is my guilty treat, as the carb counts are undoubtedly out of sight. I count it as a moral victory whenever I manage not to order it. [#105 on the menu]
(6) Cuốn thịt nướng (grilled pork rolls)[#5 on the menu]
(7] Bánh bao xep - Roasted pork belly in steamed buns with that shredded Vietnamese salad with carrots and daikon (I think). This one frankly confused me, since I think of bao as heavy Chinese buns, often the weakest dish on a dim sum cart. But this version is excellent, savory without being over-the-top doughy. [#8 on the menu]
(8) Cơm Chiên Cua - Fried rice with lump crabmeat. One of the worst mistakes that food snobs make is turning their noses up at fried rice, especially fried rice with lump crabmeat. This is ambrosial comfort food. [#48 on the menu]
(9) Grilled pork belly banh mi (I assume there are some kind of diacritical marks on “banh mi” in Vietnamese, but by this point in time I view “banh mi” as an American word) [Only on the blackboard menu and I think not available for sit-down dining
Toni, John Tanner (@johntannerbbq) , and I did a banh mi “taste-off” a couple of months ago, pitting Bep Viet’s grilled pork belly versus Ba Le’s fermented pork versus Banh Mi DC’s pate and mayo and combination. I highly recommend their pork belly banh mi , although Toni and I are still a bit more partial to Banh Mi DC’s pate and mayo version. The bread on Bep Viet’s version is very good, but I suspect it’s from Lee’s Sandwiches, the chain banh mi place that is right across the street, and it’s a little hard for my taste. Michael and Elaine should break down and drive down Route 50 a mile or so and pick up the baguettes from Banh Mi DC.
John wrote up all three banh mi places on his John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog (which goes far beyond barbecue).
John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog – 24 Jun 24
You remember Doug Herbert, our Senior South Mississippi, Offal, and Vietnamese Correspondent, from our recent joint visits to Rice Paper and Trường Tiền. Here’s his photo from his post on Fra…
John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog – 28 Jun 24
After picking up a banh mi at Bếp Việt, Doug Herbert and I drove over to Ba Le. It sits at 2822 Graham Road, just off US 29, between 29 and US 50, in one of the many strip shopping centers that bed…
John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog – 3 Jul 24
Doug Herbert and I had one more banh mi stop after Bếp Việt and Ba Le. Just a short drive on Graham Road south from Ba Le, you come to DC Banh Mi in a shopping center on your left, just after you c…
Tonight, I showed Elaine some of the photos from John’s review, which she loved. Embarrassingly, however, she pointed out that my identification of the banh mi as “shaky beef” was flat wrong (my error, which John innocently repeated in his review) – they serve only grilled pork belly and lemongrass chicken, as you correctly noted here.
(NOTE: Elaine specifically called this “grilled pork belly,” but it has to be the leanest pork belly I’ve ever had.)
(10) Cá chiên - Crispy whole flounder with spicy ginger sauce - We had this tonight, pure deep fried goodness, with a delicious sauce chunky with diced ginger we’re going to try to replicate at home. Expert frying is hard to find and this was it. Well worth the “market price” ($65). Sorry for the crummy photo, which does not do justice to this dish.
For the sake of completeness, I will mention a couple of dishes on Bep Viet’s menu that we’ve found to be only very good – Bò Bía - deep fried jicama rolls with Chinese sausage [#3 on the menu
]
– and a chicken with broccoli dish (major ordering error on the part of Toni, who views broccoli as a “super food”) that I can’t find on the current menu, so maybe it’s been discontinued (and rightly so).
We just got back from a month of eating in NYC and, while I would never argue that the DMV can approach NYC for diversity and quality of food, tonight’s meal at Bep Viet was a great reminder that we do very very well in some areas, especially Vietnamese, Korean, and Ethiopian (and steamed blue crabs, it goes without saying).
Somewhat rudely (since they were slammed tonight), I detained Elaine for a few minutes to ask her about the restaurant. She explained that the recipes, which they’ve tweaked, are mostly from northern Vietnam. Her parents fled from North Vietnam to the South during the war (leaving her grandparents behind; I think she said she never met them). She and her husband came to the US as kids and helped their parents out with other restaurants (she didn’t name them, but I suspect that she meant Banh Ta and Little Viet Garden) and this was their first restaurant out on their own.
I asked Elaine if there were any dishes she would love to add to the menu if only Americans’ taste buds would accept them and she enthusiastically and immediately named two: (a) A dish of fermented fish wrapped in lettuce leaves with a pineapple sauce and (b) a raw beef dish served with what she described as a vinaigrette sauce. She said there were others, but was obviously pressed for time and did not go into details.
I mentioned that years ago when Seng Luangrath had just taken over Bangkok Golden (now Padaek) in Seven Corners (when the Laotian menu was still “by request only”), Seng had agreed to do a private order feast for a large group of my friends (I think we ended up with about 15-20) that featured both items from the still-secret Laotian menu and off-menu Laotian items (which had things like greens with tree ant eggs and bull penis).
Elaine said she would be interested in doing something like that too, but said that because their place was so small and their customer base is big on evenings and weekends it would have to be on a weekday, mid-afternoon, around 2 or 3. She wasn’t specific, but said we would need a large group (I’m guessing a dozen, minimum). She didn’t say this, but I also feel sure we would need to pay in advance for a pre-agreed menu and that it wouldn’t be dirt cheap (maybe $50-$75 a person, though I’m totally guessing about that).
I think I can recruit a handful of my relatively food-adventurous friends for something like that, but most of them are stubbornly resisting retirement, which might hold their numbers down. Do you think a significant number of your priceless list of Chowhound/Hungry Onion aficionados might be willing to commit to a mid-week, mid-day, not-dirt cheap meal like that?
Doug
