vietnamese girlfriend

BUN – my new favorite Vietnamese’s Cuisine

Because of the geographic location, VietnameseCuisine and Guizhou cuisine has a natural link; Vietnamese Cuisine would be my first choice besides Chinese. Nanshan in Chinatown, Saigon in uptown and the PHO in my neighborhood are the restaurants I visit often. When I worked in downtown Kansas City years ago, I went to a little dirty Vietnamese‘s Pho place every Friday with my Chinese friends, Compared to those so called American-Chinese food, a bowl of Pho is much closer to my home town taste, and cured my homesickness a little.

From what I can remember, the Vietnamese’s restaurants are normally inexpensive, and perhaps not the best place to take your girlfriend for a date, they are a level lower than Chinese restaurants in some people’s minds. However, my impression was completely changed by one Vietnamese restaurant: BUN SOHO.

One day, I went out with my friend Everlyn, she invited me to a nearby restaurant for a tea break.

My first impression as I walked into the restaurant was the time and effort that must have went into the design. You can feel the sentiment through the atmosphere that owner had in mind.

I knew my first impression was right when I met the owner: Tony.

TONY, native of Chaozhou, Vietnamese Chinese, typical Scholar players.

The things he enjoys the most is the early morning tea and evening wine. Seems to have one thing on his mind, and that’s to enjoy life to the fullest. I categorize restaurant owners into two different groups; one is the “Money Maker“: This owner is in it just for the money, the restaurant just a means to inflate their bank accounts, very serious, every day calculating the sales to the penny.

The other is the group that does it out of their love for food and people and the satisfaction garnered when a customer is full and happy. They consider it a career, a family, all their treasures are kept there, a place for them to meet friends and interact with all sorts of different people.

TONY definitely is in the latter category.

Even a cup of tea is beautiful here: as if it’s a snow lotus in full bloom, he doesn’t miss any detail of this art.

The environment did not seem too upscale, but rather a kind of homey feels.

There are oil painting collections all over the wall, showing the owner’s taste.

Also a good place to enjoy quiet time for couples (Will take my husband there next week, even us old couples need some quality time alone now and then)

However, the most memorable thing was the food I tasted!

BUN SOHO totally changed my impression of Vietnamese cuisine not being well-made. For example, this appetizer looks simple, but it seemed to be dried octopus, and taste so rich with plenty of flavors, I asked myself, is this Vietnamese? Tony laughed and said that his dishes indeed are influenced by the French and can be considered as more modern Vietnamese. It seems French does have the Midas touch. The combination of local dishes and French cuisine often has morphs into some better, new dishes, just like New Orlean’s CAJUN cuisine.

My camera didn’t capture all of the beauty of the dishes; their online pictures speak to the real look of the dishes. And most of them, I have never seen in any other Vietnamese restaurant. Their menu it is also worth mentioning, a big thick, beautifully printed, with nice pictures for each dish, looks like a very nice elegant professional photography album. You can tell that the Menu is made by someone who loves food from the bottom of his heart. And you can get a rough idea of the owner’s own personality and the taste as you browse the pages.

I didn’t get to try every dish in the restaurant, but it’s the only four-star Vietnamese restaurant selected by The New York TIME OUT’s for the quality for their food. I found a great place for our next dinner meeting for my beautiful girlfriends, not to mention Tony said he will give us a discount. To be honest, I think their price is very reasonable and fair, as I recall, the most expensive dish I saw was around $12.

In the end, BUN has given me a new love for Vietnamese food. Maybe someone will say I am advertising here, but it is really worth a try, and it will be your loss if you don’t.

BUN SOHO at 143 Grand Street, http://www.bunsohonyc.com/, located in SOHO, Chinatown’s fringe. After a facial at La Peau, enjoying a nice meal in a nice restaurant,……….. Life is beautiful.

Source: http://blog.sina.com.cn/lanlan_nyc

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