Last time I was in Saigon, Ling and I enjoyed a fine meal at L’en Tete. I made that my first dinner appointment during my second trip.
Fish Soup in a Marseille style
I love how the French make a fish soup. In Chinese cuisine, they try to strangle the taste and smell of the fish away with ginger. The Indians use tumeric like you’d use baking soda on bad smells. The French, however, they reduce, reduce, reduce the stock until it is unabashedly FISH.
The croutons made a nice texture with the soup along with some cheese shavings (sort of an emmental cheese, though I don’t know the exact species). The saffron-tainted mayonnaise I could do without. I didn’t really get the point of it. Its flavor can’t compete with the fish. As well, it doesn’t blend very nicely into the soup. Perhaps I didn’t use it properly.
Tartiflette
I asked for something authentic and they suggested this unusual dish. It’s unusual because a casserole of potato, onion, and cream is more often a meal after skiing in the Alps for a day, not in the Tropics. However, they say it is a continually popular dish in Saigon, so they serve it. In fact, it was quite nice, matched up with a dry white wine(*). The kitchen’s skill was evident. In twenty minutes they prepared the dish. Now obviously you can’t bake potatos done inside twenty minutes, so they (as I later clarified with the owner) par-boil the potatoes first, then slice and mix them in with some onions. They have beautifully calibrated the process. The potatoes kept their sharp edges like glacial scree, but were entirely cooked. The onions were softened in butter before mixing into the tartiflette, so their taste was much more developed than if theyd simply been tossed in, raw.
Reference Dessert: A Crepe Suzette
I enjoy a hearty Crepe Suzette when I eat at L’Angelus. So I ordered one here (they are very comparable restaurants). L’en Tete’s Crepe Suzette is much more elemental. Prepared in the kitchen (not tableside), it had barely any taste of the Grand Marnier liquor it was flambeed in. The crepe itself wasn’t a fay, pale pancake, either. It had dark brown splotches of a assertive pan. Even the sugar was immensely coarse, surviving in the mouth to give counterpoint to the wet crepe. It was a nice variation to what I imagine a Crepe Suzette to be like.
Anyway, it was a very nice meal all around. The owners have a fine kitchen and a gracious dining room.
(*) I asked for the owner to pair a wine with the tartiflette. What did he suggest? The cheapest win on their list of French. I wish I could export some of his honesty to the cut-and-thrust wine stewards of Singapore.