When I lived in Southern California, I used to eat regularly in Westminster’s Little Saigon, and when the mood struck, I’d go for bo bay mon, aka seven courses of beef.
One of the best places to experience this feast of bovine indulgence was a place called Anh Hong, a restaurant that has a current relationship with the subject of this column, the excellent Bamboo Bistro. But Bamboo Bistro goes its cousin in California one better by offering literally dozens of amazing family platters. It’s the only Vietnamese restaurant in town that replicates the Little Saigon beef extravaganza so adroitly, and that’s not all.
So what are the seven courses of beef? Here’s a short rundown. First you will get the ubiquitous assortment of leafy greens and herbs that accompany most Vietnamese dishes, a pile of basil, mint, cilantro and untranslatable botanicals like rau ram, an herb that tastes like a cross between Vicks VapoRub and rosemary.
Then you get a flat dish lined with perfectly red, perfectly thin slices of prime beef, each one the thickness of a slice of American cheese. Pickled carrot and radish come with sliced cucumber on a separate dish, and on the table there are condiments like Sriracha chili sauce and jars of mam tom, purple fermented shrimp paste that even most natives won’t touch.
The final element is a fondue pot filled with a bubbling broth. You’ll drop the meat in, let it cook, and then smear up a disc of rice paper with the sauces and vegetables, adding the beef at the last minute. Roll it up and presto: You’ve got a delicious Vietnamese crepe.
This is Course One.
Course Two is a beef salad topped with crispy shallots and lots of mysterious herbs. The next four courses come at once, two types of grilled cylinders of beef, beef steamed inside a lotus leaf with mushrooms and glass noodles and finally beef wrapped up in a pungent leaf called a lot leaf, which has an indescribably medicinal finish on the palate.
The final course is the soothing chao bo, a beef rice soup mild enough for a toddler.
If you come for this dinner, I recommend you limit your other choices to drinks, such as coconut water, served in the hollow of a coconut, from which you can scoop the tender meat should the mood strike.
The thing is, the seven courses of beef is only one of the compelling options here. One of the best dishes on the menu is ca nuong, a magnificent fried catfish the menu tells us is broiled. (It is not.) The fish is sold at $11 per pound and generally is at least three pounds, so bring your friends. It’s topped with a flurry of crispy fried shallots, and eaten the same way the fondue beef is eaten, inside rice-paper crepes with the same trimmings.
If I weren’t coming here for the beef, I’d start with an order of cha gio, or fried spring rolls. They have a stuffing made from crab, pork and glass noodles, and they tend to be shatteringly crisp as well. These too are rolled up inside alien-looking leaves and dipped into nuoc mam, a clear, powerfully fermented fish sauce.
Goi cuon, aka summer rolls, have half the guilt and probably one-third of the calories, because they are wrapped in uncooked rice-paper skins and are virtually oil-free. Inside, there are whole shrimp, slices of cooked pork and lots of rice noodles.
Roasted quail, two birds, actually, is a bargain at $8.50, and really deep-fried, if you are the quibbling type. Shrimp chips, crunchy manioc flour shapes roughly the size of a first baseman’s glove, round out the appetizers, and, well they’re a lot better than Cheetos.
No Vietnamese restaurant worth its salt is soupless, and neither is Bamboo Bistro. Pho, that meal-in-a-bowl rice noodle soup, is served here, but is probably not the equal of the one at Pho So 1, at the edge of Chinatown on Spring Mountain Road. Sup nam is a mushroom soup made with at least seven different types of mushrooms, anchored by a tasty pork broth and shards of minced pork lurking toward the bottom of the bowl.
Next time you’re in the mood for beef, give this place a try before heading over to your favorite steakhouse for a New York strip and a baked potato. No one will blame you for a second if you leave the jar of mam tom untouched.
Bamboo Bistro
8560 Desert Inn Road
838-6770
Open Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
Suggested dishes:
fried spring rolls, $6.50
roasted quail, $8.50
seven courses of beef, $23
mushroom soup, $9.50
fried catfish, $11 per pound.