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Archive for Westminster

Little Saigon Mini Crawl

Nov06

Restaurant: Brodard Restaurant [1, 2]

Location: 16105 Brookhurst St. Fountain Valley, CA 92708. Phone number (657) 247-4401

Date: September 26, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Solid

_

Crawls are usually a lot of fun, and after the super extensive Garden Grove / Westminster Vietnamese Food crawl we did a few months ago, my brother, parents, and went down south for a smaller (3 stop) version.

7U1A4693
We started furthest south at Brodard.
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Their interior is fairly modern.

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7U1A4704
7U1A4706
7U1A4707
7U1A4708
7U1A4709
Vietnamese menus can be very long, and this is no exception.

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Roasted Duck Spring Rolls (Goi Cuon Vit). Tender roasted duck wrapped in rice paper with asparagus, scallions, cucumber, and cilantro served with plum sauce. Hoison (plum) sauce makes everything taste great.

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Eggplant Tempura Rolls. Tempura eggplant, asparagus, cucumber, avocado, and cilantro wrapped in rice paper and served with soy vinaigrette. Not as good as the duck (or the pork we had last time).
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Spicy Beef Salad (Goi Bo). Tender marinated beef wokked with Asian spices over lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions in spicy lemongrass vinaigrette. Delicious.
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The check for reference.

_
_

Restaurant: Oc & Lau Restaurant [1, 2]

Location: 9892 Westminster Blvd Unit R, Garden Grove, CA 92844. (714) 583-8100

Date: September 29, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Great

_

This crawl returned to Oc & Lau as well, but this time to location 2, which is tucked behind the Garlic & Chives.
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The exterior of location 1, but today we went to 2.
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Interior of location 2 — much bigger than 1.
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Big menu.

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Coconut Swirly Escargot (Oc Len Xao Dua). After ordering the wrong snails last time I got it right this time — with the conical Vietnamese kind and the slightly sweet curry sauce. This sauce is amazing.
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You have to suck the meat out of these little cones.
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Empty shells.
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Fried quail (Chim Cut Rotti). Much like the Chinese style quail. Great!
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Weird purple yam and sticky milk free dessert. Oddly addictive.
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The check again.

_
_

Restaurant: Garlic and Chives [1, 2]

Location: 9892 Westminster Blvd #311, Garden Grove, CA 92844.: (714) 591-5196

Date: September 29, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Great

_

Today we finish up at my favorite down here, Garlic and Chives.
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The minimalist interior.
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Slightly spicy edamame.

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Grilled Turmeric Fish with Dill served on the skillet w/ vermicelli.

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Vermicelli noodles and herbs served with turmeric fish. You wrap these up with the fish. Delicious and very much like we had a couple of times in Vietnam.
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Baked Clams with Garlic & Chives. Or maybe Chili Garlic. Nice actually. Lots of flavor.
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House Special Lobster. Sautéed in house special sauce with garlic, onion, jalapeños, on a bed of noodles. This was AWESOME. Tons and tons of flavor, particularly over the noodles. Way better than the Crustacean and probably 1/4 of the price.

Overall, a fun and very filling little adventure!

Related posts:

  1. Little Saigon Mega Crawl
  2. Eating Saigon – Hoa Tuc
  3. Food as Art: Little Saigon
  4. Taking back Little Saigon
  5. Orange Afternoon — Garlic & Chives
By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Brodard, Garden Grove, Garlic and Chives, Oc & Lau, Orange County, Vietnamese cuisine, Westminster

Little Saigon Mega Crawl

Sep16

Restaurant: Brodard Restaurant

Location: 16105 Brookhurst St. Fountain Valley, CA 92708. Phone number (657) 247-4401

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Solid

_

Crawls are usually a lot of fun, and this super far, super extensive Garden Grove / Westminster Vietnamese Food crawl has been months in the planning. I collated several online lists of the best Vietnamese in Little Saigon and narrowed it down to 5 places (plus one coffee shop) and a list of their best dishes. I love Vietnamese food and have written up my full 2014 trip to Vietnam here. Bear in mind that 4 of us completed the entire crawl. Two joined for the 4 middle places.

7U1A4693
We started furthest south at Brodard.
7U1A4695-Pano
Their interior is fairly modern.
7U1A4718
7U1A4719
7U1A4720
And they have a bunch of takeaway and bakery products. French influence in Vietnam I guess.

7U1A4702
7U1A4704
7U1A4706
7U1A4707
7U1A4708
7U1A4709
Vietnamese menus can be very long, and this is no exception.
7U1A4716
Grilled Pork Spring Rolls (Nem Nuong Cuon). Heritage Berkshire grilled pork wrapped in rice paper with lettuce, cucumber, carrots, cilantro, chives, daikon and mint served with their house special sauce. These were a great spring roll, pretty much your typical “fresh” (soft, not fried) Vietnamese roll, except for the thick slab of amazing grilled pork. Really made the roll.
7U1A4723
Jackfruit Salad (Goi Mit). Young jackfruit and steamed pork tossed with asian herbs, peanuts, shallots, and roasted sesame seeds, accompanied with rice crackers and mom tom (fermented shrimp sauce) dressing on the side. I was interested to get this because I hadn’t had it — can’t say I loved the weird sour and fish taste. It was edible certainly, but a bit odd.

7U1A4726
Hue Style Beef Noodle Soup (Bun Bo Hue). A spicy and richly flavorful soup with rice vermicelli, tender beef shank, pork hock, and roasted shallots accompanied by asian herbs and bean sprouts. This was supposed to have liver, can’t say if it did. What it did have was PIG SNOUT. Really obvious snouty snouts. Pretty sketchy. Broth and noodles were great though.
7U1A4734
Mixed up a bit to show off the noodles.

Overall, while I anticipated Brodard would be one of my favorites, it just turned out fine. Nice, modern, but I wasn’t blown away. Hard to tell though based on three dishes.

_
_

Restaurant: Quan Hop Restaurant

Location: 15640 Brookhurst St. Westminster, CA 92683. (714) 689-0555

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Good

_

On to stop two, just down the street.
7U1A4737
Clearly this wasn’t built as a Vietnamese restaurant originally.
7U1A4738
The interior made me think it was once a sushi bar or something.
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7U1A4740
7U1A4741
7U1A4742
Another big menu.
7U1A4743
Some riesling — they even charged us a little corkage!
7U1A4749
Rice pancakes (banh beo). These were amazing. You put a little fish sauce on them and slurp ’em like an oyster. Really light, delicate, and exciting flavor.
7U1A4756
Shaved filet mignon, stir-fried and tossed with finely shredded banana blossoms (goi bo). Very nice beef salad. Tangy with great textures.
7U1A4759
Fried rice cakes topped with pork and shrimp dumplings (banh it ram). Extremely interesting carb on carb dish. Greasy (in a good way) rice cakes with, yeah, a dumpling on them. Kinda a bit breaded, but tasty.

Overall, All three of our dishes were great.

_
_

Restaurant: Song Long Restaurant

Location: 9361 Bolsa Ave, Ste 108. Westminster, CA 92683. (714) 775-3724

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Old school, but amazing fish

_

I was wary of place number three, it felt too old school — but it turned out to be great.
7U1A4765
Old school.
7U1A4798
And not the most updated minimall.
7U1A4799
Yeah baby, look at those curtains! This place has much more French influence.
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7U1A4769
7U1A4770
7U1A4771
7U1A4772
7U1A4773
7U1A4774
7U1A4775
Huge menu.
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Rice crackers.
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French bread.
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Vietnamese style Chicken Wings (Canh Ga Chien Nuoc Mam). The wings were fine, very crispy, but that garlic butter sauce was to die for!
7U1A4792
Sizzling fish (Cha Ca Thang Long). Catfish garnished with dill, onions, peanuts, served with pickles and greens and rice vermicelli.
7U1A4795
The herbs and noodles. You pile it all together with the fish and add fish sauce. Absolutely amazing. 10/10 dish. Really really great fish with a lovely turmeric/dill flavor. Super addictive.

Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by Song Long. Really by the fish dish — which as I had been told was worth the price of admission. Really fabulous. Garlic butter was crazy good too.

_
_

Restaurant: Banh Cuon Tay Ho 4

Location: 9822 Bolsa Ave Ste 101H. Westminster, CA 92683. (714) 531-5171

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Very casual

_

Fourth place.
7U1A4800
This has more the look of a lunch chain spot.
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Interior is new, but bland.
7U1A4816
Ice Tea?  No, it’s a giant pitcher of fish sauce on the table!
7U1A4810
Combo with wide rice noodles (banh cuon) and sweet potato and shrimp fritters (banh tom) and some liverwurst like meat. Interesting, and tasty enough with fish sauce. Almost the entire menu is various combos like this mostly including the same set of rotating items.
7U1A4817
Beef noodles. You douse it in fish sauce and…
7U1A4824
Mix it up. Surprisingly delicious.

Overall, this was my least favorite of the 5 places as it’s menu was so small (mostly version of the first dish). It would be okay for a quite cheap and tasty lunch by oneself.

_
_

Restaurant: Oc & Lau Restaurant

Location: 10130 Garden Grove Blvd, Garden Grove, CA 92843. (714) 636-2000

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Vietnamese

Rating: Great

_

I had high expectations for Oc & Lau too, as it was purported to be in the league of Garlic and Chives which we didn’t visit today, but I love.
7U1A4825
The exterior, just down the block from Garlic and Chives — there are two locations.
7U1A4826-Pano
Interior is.
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7U1A4835
7U1A4836
7U1A4837
7U1A4838
7U1A4839
Big menu.
7U1A4744
Ruinart never sucks.
7U1A4845

Frog legs (Ech Chien Bo). Fried frog legs. Excellent!

7U1A4850
Fried quail (Chim Cut Rotti). Much like the Chinese style quail. Great!
7U1A4852
Garlic butter queen clams (Nghieu Hoang Hau Chay Toi). Really tasty.
7U1A4858
Creamy coconut periwinkle escargot (Oc Gao Dua). This sauce was a 10, rich with curry coconut flavor, but I messed up and got the tiny winkle snails which are impossible to eat. About 1 in 3 times you can pry one out (with some challenge) using the toothpick. Bummer. I just sucked the sauce.
7U1A4867
Tamarind Lobster (Tom Hum Range Me). The sauce was too sweet — tangy sweet — but very sweet. Nice lobster though. We would have ordered with a different sauce.
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Filet Mignon with udon (Bo Filet Xao Udon). Very tasty beef with onions and great thick udon noodles.
7U1A4877
Weird purple yam and sticky milk free dessert.

_
_

Restaurant: Cafe Lu

Location: 636 S Harbor Blvd, Santa Ana, CA 92704. (714) 604-6347

Date: July 31, 2019

Cuisine: Coffee

Rating: Super weird

_

With just four of us left — and being very full — someone suggested we sample this oddity of the Orange County Vietnamese cultural scene:
IMG_2197
Cafe Lu, a kind of bikini coffee bar.
IMG_2198
Imagine a super divey bar where women in bathing suits and stripper heels serve you extremely over-priced Vietnamese coffee (or chicken wings). Very weird. Even weirder clientele. A certain hedonist managed to pound a giant coconut smoothy-shake (after our 5 restaurants) and THEN go to a huge Cantonese banquet in the SGV only 2 hours later. Woah!

In total summary, an amazing 4-5 hour journey through a California landscape not so often explored by the typical white-bread Los Angeles resident. One of the great things about our city (and I include the extended area we visited today) is the incredible wealth of culinary (and cultural) variety brought in by our vast immigrant populations. Keep ’em coming!

In terms of restaurant quality, none of these places blew me away quite as much as Garlic & Chives, but Oc & Lau is close and seems worthy of its own full meal visit.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. Eating Saigon – Hoa Tuc
  2. Taking back Little Saigon
  3. Food as Art: Little Saigon
  4. Quick Eats – Le Saigon
  5. Chicken Crawl – Dong Nguyen
By: agavin
Comments (5)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Banh Cuon Tay Ho 4, Brodard, Champagne, Garden Grove, hedonists, OC, Oc & Lau, Quan Hop Restaurant, snails, Song Long, Vietnamese cuisine, Westminster, Wine
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