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Restaurant
In this section FCVN Members can present their restaurant reviews.
| Ba Mien |
4941 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL
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Chicago Tribune review: 2 forks
This full-service restaurant, decorated in lively style with hanging red lanterns, offers traditional Vietnamese fare, with a menu offering generally helpful English translations. Recommended dishes include the pho and a crisp rice pancake, served hot and folded over a filling of shrimp, sliced pork, bean sprouts and other chopped vegetables.
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| Hai Yen |
1055 W. Argyle St.
Chicago, IL
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Chicago Tribune review: 3 forks
Hien Ngo, owner of this Argyle Street Vietnamese-Chinese restaurant, named her place after an Asian expression for "good food, good life." Here the mantra is translated into a wide variety of beef, seafood, poultry, noodle and soup dishes. Start with shrimp pate wrapped around sugar cane, or soup heaped with crab, shrimp and rice noodles. A signature dish, bo bay mon, is a seven-course meat-lovers feast including a beef salad, a hearty beef porridge and a seasoned grilled-beef main course. Most selections come with a variety of garnishes and sauces (ask your server what goes with what), and and many are cooked over a flame at the table. Take in the crisp decor of dark wood and white linens as you finish up with a latte and dessert. The frozen drink combinations are unexpected: mango or honeydew capped with tangy fruits. But frozen bubble tea "lattes" and Vietnamese-French coffee with condensed milk are most popular among regulars.
Hai Yen graciously catered our Tet celebrations in 2004 and 2005.
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| Pasteur |
5525 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL
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Chicago Tribune review by Phil Vettel: 3 stars
Kim, Dan and Tuan Nguyen had to close the original Pasteur after a fire swept through its Lawrence Avenue building in 1995. The restaurants new quarters are on Broadway, across from St. Itas Church. The Nguyens opened the first place in 1985, having left their country after the fall of Saigon, and at first they concentrated on South Vietnamese cooking. But Tuan has since gone back to Vietnam and investigated the cuisines of other regions. "I had the chance to test food from all over the country," he says. Now the menu also includes North Vietnamese cuisine. The unified land is represented both on the menu and in the decor. The oil paintings on the walls depict scenes from all over Vietnam--the central market in Ho Chi Minh City, a temple in Hue, a fisherman in Can Tho.
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