Restaurant: Green Tangerine

Location: Hanoi

Date: March 30, 2014

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: A tad too experimental

Our final meal in Vietnam. Cry.

Green Tangerine serves what its website calls “French food with a Vietnamese twist.”

The usual big menu.

Shrimp salad.

Duck pastry mixed with eggplants, tomatoes, curcuma, onions on a red berries sauce.

Sliced beef cooked in oven topped with 2 kinds of chutneys: red pepper and pineapple in curry, served with homemade pastas and Gouda cheese.

Fish in saffron rolled with bacon served with rice noodle: “Cha ca” style, Green Tangerine way.

Chicken in mango, rum and cardamon sauce served with a tart of spinach enhanced with mango slices.

Lasagna of fishes cooked in white wine served with vegetables and a trio of mousses: red fruits, parmesan cheese, and basil leaves.

Mango stir fried with passion fruits sauce, in crumble served with vanilla ice cream.

Only some of the dishes here “worked.” They all looked pretty, but a few of them had weird flavor combinations that just didn’t quite get off the ground. They weren’t bad, just the truth is, none had the intensity and liveliness of good straight-up Vietnamese. Sometimes you can get too experimental — or perhaps lack the skill to pull it off.

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