This is the odd name of a Vietnamese restaurant near my house. We've passed by it several times, but never ate there until today. I think it's a chain, and features the kind of uninspiring interior that one would expect from such a place, but the food was actually pretty good, if a bit overpriced. I like Vietnamese food, but in Thailand, it almost always tends to be the same 5-6 staples dishes on offer, usually of virtually the same quality and style. Would be nice to find an authentic, no-frills Vietnamese place in Bangkok with some different dishes.
We started with khanom beuang yuan:
The thin, crispy "pancake" is filled with ground pork, minced shrimp, firm tofu and beansprouts. Most Thai just pour the sauce over it and go at it with a spoon and fork, but I like to eat it Vietnamese style, which means rolling bits of it up with the provided fresh herbs (mind, coriander, etc.) and sauce in lettuce leaves and eating with your hands.
We also had muu yaang, grilled pork with a side of fermented rice noodles and crispy garlic:
Not bad at all--the pork was marinated before being grilled, and despite being quite try, was pretty tasty. A bit too meaty for this wannabe veggie though.
The best dish of the day was poh pia thawt, deep-fried spring rolls:
I almost feel a bit embarrased ordering spring rolls--they're a bit of a foreigner cliche in Thailand, but these were by far the best I've had in a very long time; crispy, hot and made to order, and generously filled with savory/sour fermented ground pork, glass noodles, mushrooms and some crispy vegetable that I forgot to identify. We ordered two plates of this. We also ordered pho, Vietnamese noodle soup, which was very bland and not worth showing here. I've had pho a few times in Thailand and for some reason the Thais cannot do this dish any justice. All in all a nice lunch, but probably not worth the cost (believe it or not, $11 is a substantial amount for lunch for two in Thailand!).