Good Pho you

Huong’s hidden treasures

By Mark Klimek

Huong Vietnamese Food, 349 Cumberland Avenue, Portland, (207) 773-7870. Sun. through Thur., 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Fri. and Sat., 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. No credit cards, checks accepted. No smoking.

HUONG’S offers delicate dishes.

I live for new restaurants. A rush of excitement comes over me when I see a bunch of cooking equipment being loaded into an empty storefront.

I even get psyched when I notice ground being broken near the Maine Mall, though I know it means another corporate chain restaurant is inevitably on its way.

You see, each new restaurant holds the potential for greatness. The perfectly seared tuna steak or a creme brulee powerful enough to alter your molecular structure could pop up where you least expect it. There’s also a cache that comes with consistently being among the first to check out new eateries (at least among the crowd I run with). It’s snobbish, but I love pointing out new restaurants that haven’t yet appeared on anyone’s radar screen.

So I was more than a bit dismayed when a friend — one who hardly ever goes out to dinner — recently asked if I’d tried the new Vietnamese restaurant, Huong Vietnamese Food. Uh, the new what? My radar didn’t detect any lemon grass, coriander, or mint on Cumberland Avenue. Inconceivable!

Turns out Huong, which opened in October, is easy to overlook. It’s wedged inconspicuously between Goodwill and a box company, for one thing, and the facade is less than eye catching. But Huong’s location and unsightly decor conceals some of the best (and cheapest) Asian food to explode onto the Portland restaurant scene in years. I sampled a chunk of the overwhelmingly large menu on a recent visit and enjoyed nearly everything put in front of me (even the stuff I didn’t order but got anyway). In fact, I can’t remember a new restaurant doing such a good job right out of the gate.

One of the joys of Vietnamese cuisine is its lightness and delicacy, with lots of herbs and fresh vegetables (a holdover from the days of French rule). Vietnamese food is even lighter than that of its Asian neighbors. Take Huong’s fried egg roll (Cha Gio, $1.95), filled with minced pork. It was nearly greaseless and more flavorful than the oily bundles typically served at Chinese restaurants. The subtle and delicious spring rolls (Goi Cuon, $1.95) were stuffed with rice vermicelli, whole shrimp, shredded pork, veggies, and herbs and served with hoisin peanut sauce.

I moved on to Pho (pronounced fah), a rich, beef broth soup with long rice noodles, thinly sliced beef, onion, ginger, coriander, and star anise. It’s essentially the national dish of Vietnam, where it’s eaten all day and is an especially popular breakfast choice. Huong offers six Pho options, all served in gigantic tureens and accompanied by a copious amount of crunchy bean sprouts, stalks of fresh Asian basil, and tangy lime wedges.

In search of the true Vietnamese experience, I ordered Pho Tai Nam Gan ($4.50), a concoction of the above ingredients plus pieces of soft tendon and tripe (cow stomach). The broth, which boasted a lovely black licorice-like bite, was tempered with a few lime squeezes and plenty of basil. The tendon and tripe? Not bad. A bit chewy and salty, but mostly they soaked in the broth’s rich flavor.

More fainthearted diners may want to check out the Pho Ga ($4.50). This Vietnamese version of old-fashion chicken noodle soup was replete with fat noodles, tender chicken, cilantro, and other fresh herbs. Skip the Campbell’s the next time you’re sick and pick up a bowl of this instead (and hope your grandmother doesn’t mind).

After a few more unexpected and unordered servings of spring rolls, I tasted another soup called Hu Tieu Nam Giang ($4.75). The relatively simple broth was lighter and less complex than the Pho, but it was loaded with plump shrimp, juicy pork sliced thin, and tender cellophane noodles. Just to keep things interesting, Huong threw in two quail eggs.

Next at bat was Com Suong Bi Cha ($4.75), a plate of steamed short-grain rice with grilled, shredded pork as well as tangy chunks of barbecued pork. Even better was the Bun Thit Nuong ($4.25), which consisted of thin, short strands of vermicelli mixed with finely shredded carrots, lettuce, and sweet barbecued beef. I made a delicious warm salad out of the dish by pouring in a fish sauce and rice wine mixture. The result was a meat-heavy entree that managed to be light and elegant.

The final noodle dish of the night was Mi Xao Don Thap Cam (or as I like to call it, Number 24, $5.50), a mound of crispy noodles fried with chicken, pork, and squid, as well as shrimp, broccoli, and peapods. The accompanying sauce — a viscous blend of oyster sauce, corn starch, sugar, and rice wine — had a nice sweet and salty balance, but rapidly turned the crispy noodles into a soggy mass.

Throughout this feast my group sampled Huong’s many beverages, most of which we had never seen anywhere else. I’m sure those skysurfers on the Mountain Dew ads think they’re drinking “extreme” soda, but I challenge any of ’em to get through an entire can of Honey Grass Jelly Drink. It tasted a hell of lot like honey, grass, and jelly, and had a disturbing photo of Jello-like cubes on the can. We also sucked down a few cans of Wax Gourd Water and a mysterious citrus drink with a red bull on the can (our server could only tell us that it was Vietnam’s most popular soda).

I had better luck with traditional Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk. With Huong open early maybe I’ll get one of these every morning. Who knows, I might even grab breakfast Pho to go.

Mark Klimek can be reached at writeco@maine.rr.com.