Another for the short list: Hu Tieu De Nhat, a nine-table storefront in Garden Grove’s Koreatown community. The specialty is hu tieu, a noodle soup vital to Saigon’s street-food culture that distills Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian influences. Concentrate on the “Nam Vang” section of the menu, choosing from among three noodles: egg, rice or “glass” made from potato starch. Order them in combinations to accentuate the bouncy, squiggly contrasts. Bowls arrive arrayed with shrimp, pork belly, ground pork, fishcake and quail eggs. “Soup or dry?” the server asks. If there are two of you, try one of each. The broth, flavored with pork bones and dried shrimp, comes on the side for the dry version: You might add it a little bit at a time, along with crucial condiments like pickled garlic and a chile oil reminiscent of XO sauce. It might take a minute to tune your seasonings, but when your chopsticks finally plunge into your hu tieu, the tastes and textures are symphonic.
Best new restaurants to try from 2024 101 Best Restaurants guide
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Orange County’s Little Saigon — overlapping Westminster and Garden Grove, and home to one of the largest Vietnamese populations in the United States — has enough culinary density for its own edition of 101 Best Restaurants. Previous recommendations in this guide have included Brodard Chateau, with its famous nem nuong wraps and its sweeping menu; Pho 79, where oxtail meat is a coveted addition to the spiced broth; and Ngu Binh, where Mai Tran and her family present dishes from Thua Thien Hue, a province in central Vietnam famous for its royal cuisine, including bánh ít kep bánh ram (two-tiered dumplings of glutinous rice dough filled with shrimp and pork and then set on discs of lacy fried dough).
