Thanh Tong - Falls Church

Thanh Tong is located in the West Saigon wing of the Eden Center, one of several interior "malls" squirreled away in the recesses of this center of Vietnamese commerce. A small store front, Thanh Tong literally feels like a mom and pop hole in the wall minus the pop. The proprietor is a friendly, middle-aged Vietnamese woman who speaks halting English. She had two others helping her while I was there, one Vietnamese, the other Hispanic, both of whom spoke less English than the owner. Luckily, the language barrier only poses a small problem; all you need is a finger to point out the #9 Bun Bo Hue entree on the menu, and after that, pantomime and smiles can carry you for the rest of the day.

The #9 Bun Bo Hue is the specialty of this restaurant. What you get is a deeply flavored beef noodle soup filled with a texturally diverse array of Vietnamese sausage, beef, sliced pig's knuckles, and, if you're lucky, blood pudding (unfortunately, we came late and I believe they ran out of blood pudding for our bowls). Each bowl of Bun Bo Hue comes with a huge platter of bean sprouts and fresh herbs. It goes without saying that you should fill your bowls up with veggies because the crunch of vegetables and tang from the herbs provide an essential counterpoint to the chew of the meats and offal in your soup.

The noodles are of a thicker variety, quite dissimilar from the vermicelli you get in pho. These noodles had a pleasing bite and managed to soak up the beefy broth quite well. I would also recommend you take a spoonful of the fermented shrimp paste and stir it into the broth...it adds a certain indefinable something, part saline, part maritime, that enhances the overall dish. The hot sauce available on the table was also delicious, milder than Sriracha, but somehow gouleyant in quality, I was eating it by the spoonful unaccompanied by food, it was that good. I recommend taking a spoonful and stirring it into the peanut sauce if you order fresh summer rolls. It provides a nice lift and spice to the peanut sauce without overwhelming it with heat.

While the ambiance of Thanh Tong is starkly minimalist, the restaurant still has a charm that only an austerely functional ethnic restaurant can have: the promise of an exquisitely unique meal that comes at the expense of flashy decor and style. For a meal as comforting, homey, and delicious as the #9 Bun Bo Hue, that is an expense I would gladly pay.

XO Taste Restaurant - Falls Church

This is probably one of the most authentic Cantonese restaurants in Arlington. However, even though the dishes are all authentic, from their "barbecue" meats, to their noodle soups, right down to their casseroles, I came away slightly underwhelmed. Fundamentally, the problem with X.O. is one of execution: dishes came to us either under-seasoned, over-salted, or over-cooked.

The mixed barbecue platter of roast duck, BBQ pork, and soy sauce chicken was merely ok. While the BBQ pork was nicely prepared with a subtly sweet marinade, the soy sauce chicken was pretty ordinary while the roast duck was tasteless. Our steamed flounder with ginger-scallion sauce was overcooked, dry, chewy, and bland. Similarly, the seafood and eggplant casserole did not have a lot of flavor. On the flip side, the congee with preserved egg was way over-salted. It probably isn't a great sign when the best dish is comprised of stir-fried snow pea leaves with garlic (which were very good).

I heard that this place was owned by the same people as Full Kee in Chinatown, and the menus are very similar (X.O. eschews many of the Americanized dishes found in Full Kee). The eggplant casserole, for example, was almost identical to the casserole I got once at Full Kee (they even use the same casserole dishes), except the one at Full Kee had more flavor. It feels odd to recommend a DC Asian restaurant over a NoVa restaurant, but to be honest, the kitchen at Full Kee is probably a little bit more skilled than the one at X.O., and the dishes are pretty much the same. So, you might as well get the better prepared dishes at Full Kee and save yourself the trip to the burbs. I think this is a testament to the sad state of affairs of Cantonese cuisine in the greater Washington metropolitan area.

Huong Viet - Falls Church 5/15/11

The Eden Center can be overwhelming when you go there for the first time. It is rather huge strip mall filled with stores, restaurants, and bars that cater to the local Vietnamese community. While most of these restaurants are known for particular entrees (the noodle place, the soup place, the fried tofu place), Huong Viet is generally considered to have one of the more consistently good menus.

When we got there, it was fairly crowded, and while the crowd did ebb and flow, it stayed consistently busy throughout the day, with people waiting to get a seat. Now, consider that they did this when there must be at least 15 other Vietnamese restaurants within a 2 minute radius of the place (literally...if anything, this may be an understatement).

I've been here before and can say that the "bun" dish (basically a vermicelli noodle dish smothered in fresh vegetables with grilled pork on top) is something that everyone should try once. The grilled pork is extremely flavorful, and slight bitterness from the grilling interacts well with the refreshing acidic lift of the sauce on top of the noodles.

Today, I went family style with my group of friends and we got several dishes. We accidently ordered fried spring rolls (we were trying to get the fresh, unfried rolls, but it got lost in translation) which were crisp and not greasy. Delicious with nuroc cham, a sweet and sour Vietnamese fish sauce. We also had a beef salad that was really refreshing and filled with fresh herbs like cilantro. Our three entrees were a yellow curry with catfish, caramelized pork with black pepper, and grilled lemongrass chicken. All three were good, though the lemongrass chicken was something you could have gotten in a pan-Asian restaurant and probably isn't worth the trip (but you won't have any regrets if you order it...it was very well prepared). But, you can't go wrong with the caramelized pork which was absolutely delicious. I enjoyed the fish curry, though my friend wished the curry was stronger.

On your first trip to the Eden Center, go to Huong Viet. It is consistently tasty and you won't go wrong ordering blindly on that menu.