Kyle W.
Yelp
When I was talking to some Vietnamese friends who have lived in Seattle for a while, this was one of the places they recommended, for banh hoi. I went here to check that dish out and ordered the Banh Hoi Thap Cam. Banh hoi in general has thin noodles with ground shrimp and green onion, served with lettuce, basil, cilantro, etc and fish sauce. For this dish, it also came with pork meatball, grilled pork, grilled shrimp, and ground shrimp on sugarcane. Usually, a handful of Vietnamese restaurants cut corners and just don't care if the meat has way too much fat or terribly burnt. Here, everything including the grilled pork has the right amount of fat and grilled pretty well. Shrimp was very fresh and has a lot of seasoning and garlic. I also really loved the pork meatballs. Sugarcane in the shrimp is not super sweet, but it definitely gave me memories of the fried shrimp on sugarcane dish that I occasionally get for dim sum. The very slight nitpick is that the lettuce was not too fresh, but I was able to easily just get rid of those small unfresh sections. Noodles were cooked just right and easy to separate into sizable sections to wrap it with the lettuce and add basil, fish sauce, etc to complete it.
The overall dish is very delicious. I think it is my first time trying banh hoi so it was an experience - it does take quite a while as, if you want to eat it the right way, it will take time to tear apart the lettuce and assemble the ingredients. Service as expected of such restaurants is lacking, but primary emphasis is the food. The price, even with the rapid increase compared to a year ago, is still well under the cost of a typical modest meal in Seattle these days. I left stuffed and satisfied.