Steve Fenwick
2006-04-30 20:27:14 UTC
XANH, the new Vietnamese place on Castro in Mountain View, has been open
now for a couple of weeks. This is a first-visit review.
ObZagatStyle: F:24 D:18 S:24 C:$35
This "hip-yet-child-friendly-but-also-date-night" restaurant which
features more "shrimp, shrimp, and yes, more shrimp" dishes than Bubba
Gump's, along with a heavy dose of noodle, fish, and land-meat dishes,
is intoxicated on exotic taste-meshing and presentation. Noise level not
for the faint of hearing, but don't be put off by the serious 'tude of
the furnishings--hip dress not required, and booster seats for les
enfants are readily available. Reservations recommended for dinner.
Dinner daily from 5PM, lunch weekdays 11:30 - 2ish.
ObHimmel: The furnishings are a backdrop of black woodwork with white
paper table toppers, superimposed by a mix of black ceramic and colored
bubbly glass dining and serving dishes. The walls on both sides of the
open single room are lined with mirrors from seated eye-level to about
standing eye-level, which expands the visual openness of the space. The
ceiling and walls above eye-level are done in a severe blue. Relieving
the severity of the hard decor is an enormous flower arrangement at the
entrance. Lighting is by trendy overhead suspended micro-lamps and
colorful table tea lights. Seating is conventional height mixed
bench/chair for tables in most of the room; tables by the front windows
are bar-height. Service is white linen napkins, forks, and black
chopsticks.
ObBAFoodStyle: Herself and I, having watched and waited for this new
place to open for some time now, tried to get in a week ago at about 7PM
on a Friday as walk-ins. No dice, "but please, do come back" asked the
hostess. So, having called on Friday afternoon for a reservation for 6PM
Saturday, we arrived. Front service was prompt, had our reservation,
seated us immediately, and inquired how we had heard of them.
Order-taking was prompt but patient. Our server, Jade, was knowledgeable
about the preparations of the drinks and dishes. While we were trying to
choose our way through the main menu, she brought our drinks, a
Vietnamese salty lemonade and Thai iced tea. The iced tea was regular
Thai iced tea, and good. The Vietnamese salty lemonade is an unusual
concoction of lemonade with a brined plum at the bottom of a tall,
narrow glass. The plum acts like a time-release capsule for the salt; if
one wants more salt faster, one is directed to smash on it with one's
straw. The normal release rate was fine for us; as it turned out, it
works really, really well with sweet dishes (including, oddly,
alternating sips of the Thai iced tea). Herself described it as similar
to the last few bites of a properly salted watermelon as served in the
Southern U.S. Iced water is complimentary on request, and was served
with a slice of lime without having asked.
We started with the XANH deuce roll(tm)*, a combination roll of warm
pork, shrimp, mint, chives, and carrots. The menu shows it as served
with a vinaigrette; ours was served with a peanut sauce, which worked
really well. The roll was made up like a spring roll, with an outer
layer of rice wrapper, very thin and open at both ends, lettuce and mint
just under that, surrounding the core of pork and shrimp. No noodle or
rice filler, but topped with crispy leeks. The serving was eight pieces,
which was (I suspect, based on price) the four-piece size, cut in halves.
After the deuce came an order of XANH crispy shrimp clouds(tm). Four
pieces, each consisting of a single medium-size shrimp, boiled and
tailless, perched on a rice-flour pancake (more like a small, thin, flat
dumpling), pierced by a couple of strips of green apple. This was served
with a light vinaigrette. Each morsel makes for a bit of a challenge, as
it's a big (but good!) single mouthful, to get all the flavors at once,
or chopped up , but that misses part of the point. Dipping as a shared
dish is a challenge, as it's really finger-food. The flavors--shrimp,
apple, mint--meshed nicely once the mechanical challenges were overcome.
Curiously, the garnish on the serving dish is minced shrimp, which made
for one of the few confrontations I can remember with herself over who
gets the garnish from a dish.
Our entrees were served promptly after that. She had the XANH full moon
wraps(tm), and I had the XANH banana leaf sea bass (no tm on that one).
The full moon wraps seemed to me more like larger versions of the shrimp
clouds, but served on a lettuce leaf and with the peanut sauce. Again,
very good, but I wouldn't order them with the shrimp clouds as it seemed
a bit repetitive.
The sea bass came in a rectangular steamer, wrapped in a banana leaf
which our server cut open. The fish was underneath the mass of glass
noodles, and flavored just slightly with ginger, soy, and red pepper. I
didn't notice any shiitake mushrooms as mentioned in the menu. The
flavor of the fish carried out nicely past the seasonings, which added
depth to the dish. A good competitor to House's long-standing sea bass
dish.
The dessert menu is oddly Western (due to French influence in Vietnamese
cuisine?) Very heavy on chocolate. She had a hazelnut mousse/chocolate
torte stacked thing. It consisted of a couple of different layers of
dark and semisweet chocolate cake layers, with a hazelnut mousse on top.
The hazelnut flavor was very subtle, and easy to miss after the strength
of the spice in the sea bass. I had the Pina Colada gelato, which
consisted of a base of pineapple pieces and syrup at the bottom of a
small glass, topped by coconut gelato, with a sprinkle of tiny dark
chocolate pieces on top. The gelato was more like a gelled foam, quite
soft, but with a solid coconut flavor that went well with the pineapple
and followed the sea bass well.
Service was prompt, attentive, and knowledgeable. Our server really
worked the "light touch" thing--palm lightly on back, fingertips on
shoulder and arm, etc., which worked well for me but others on this
forum, judging from past comments, might have found intrusive. Can't
tell you if other servers were doing the same thing or not. We made
several comments about dishes, and honestly came away with the
impression that they welcomed the comments (whether they did or not is a
separate matter). We both found the service to be very good, and we
tipped accordingly high.
When we arrived at 6, the room was reasonably quiet and only about
one-quarter full. By 6:45 or so, it was quite full and the sound level
had picked up to the point that conversation was possible, but at that
busy-restaurant level, not in the hushed-tone level that it started out
at.
The wine list was fairly short; maybe 20 bottles in all. Prices for
bottles seemed to be in the usual dastardly markups (e.g., Echelon 2004
Pinot Noir $25, $7 per glass), but all in the $20-$30 range and the
aforementioned Echelon was the most expensive glass I noticed.
Total was about $78 before tips. Yes, we'll be going back.
Steve
* No, I'm not kidding. There are at least six dishes in the menu that
are marked with a trademark symbol.
--
steve <at> w0x0f <dot> com
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of
arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to
skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, chip shot in the other, body thoroughly
used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"
now for a couple of weeks. This is a first-visit review.
ObZagatStyle: F:24 D:18 S:24 C:$35
This "hip-yet-child-friendly-but-also-date-night" restaurant which
features more "shrimp, shrimp, and yes, more shrimp" dishes than Bubba
Gump's, along with a heavy dose of noodle, fish, and land-meat dishes,
is intoxicated on exotic taste-meshing and presentation. Noise level not
for the faint of hearing, but don't be put off by the serious 'tude of
the furnishings--hip dress not required, and booster seats for les
enfants are readily available. Reservations recommended for dinner.
Dinner daily from 5PM, lunch weekdays 11:30 - 2ish.
ObHimmel: The furnishings are a backdrop of black woodwork with white
paper table toppers, superimposed by a mix of black ceramic and colored
bubbly glass dining and serving dishes. The walls on both sides of the
open single room are lined with mirrors from seated eye-level to about
standing eye-level, which expands the visual openness of the space. The
ceiling and walls above eye-level are done in a severe blue. Relieving
the severity of the hard decor is an enormous flower arrangement at the
entrance. Lighting is by trendy overhead suspended micro-lamps and
colorful table tea lights. Seating is conventional height mixed
bench/chair for tables in most of the room; tables by the front windows
are bar-height. Service is white linen napkins, forks, and black
chopsticks.
ObBAFoodStyle: Herself and I, having watched and waited for this new
place to open for some time now, tried to get in a week ago at about 7PM
on a Friday as walk-ins. No dice, "but please, do come back" asked the
hostess. So, having called on Friday afternoon for a reservation for 6PM
Saturday, we arrived. Front service was prompt, had our reservation,
seated us immediately, and inquired how we had heard of them.
Order-taking was prompt but patient. Our server, Jade, was knowledgeable
about the preparations of the drinks and dishes. While we were trying to
choose our way through the main menu, she brought our drinks, a
Vietnamese salty lemonade and Thai iced tea. The iced tea was regular
Thai iced tea, and good. The Vietnamese salty lemonade is an unusual
concoction of lemonade with a brined plum at the bottom of a tall,
narrow glass. The plum acts like a time-release capsule for the salt; if
one wants more salt faster, one is directed to smash on it with one's
straw. The normal release rate was fine for us; as it turned out, it
works really, really well with sweet dishes (including, oddly,
alternating sips of the Thai iced tea). Herself described it as similar
to the last few bites of a properly salted watermelon as served in the
Southern U.S. Iced water is complimentary on request, and was served
with a slice of lime without having asked.
We started with the XANH deuce roll(tm)*, a combination roll of warm
pork, shrimp, mint, chives, and carrots. The menu shows it as served
with a vinaigrette; ours was served with a peanut sauce, which worked
really well. The roll was made up like a spring roll, with an outer
layer of rice wrapper, very thin and open at both ends, lettuce and mint
just under that, surrounding the core of pork and shrimp. No noodle or
rice filler, but topped with crispy leeks. The serving was eight pieces,
which was (I suspect, based on price) the four-piece size, cut in halves.
After the deuce came an order of XANH crispy shrimp clouds(tm). Four
pieces, each consisting of a single medium-size shrimp, boiled and
tailless, perched on a rice-flour pancake (more like a small, thin, flat
dumpling), pierced by a couple of strips of green apple. This was served
with a light vinaigrette. Each morsel makes for a bit of a challenge, as
it's a big (but good!) single mouthful, to get all the flavors at once,
or chopped up , but that misses part of the point. Dipping as a shared
dish is a challenge, as it's really finger-food. The flavors--shrimp,
apple, mint--meshed nicely once the mechanical challenges were overcome.
Curiously, the garnish on the serving dish is minced shrimp, which made
for one of the few confrontations I can remember with herself over who
gets the garnish from a dish.
Our entrees were served promptly after that. She had the XANH full moon
wraps(tm), and I had the XANH banana leaf sea bass (no tm on that one).
The full moon wraps seemed to me more like larger versions of the shrimp
clouds, but served on a lettuce leaf and with the peanut sauce. Again,
very good, but I wouldn't order them with the shrimp clouds as it seemed
a bit repetitive.
The sea bass came in a rectangular steamer, wrapped in a banana leaf
which our server cut open. The fish was underneath the mass of glass
noodles, and flavored just slightly with ginger, soy, and red pepper. I
didn't notice any shiitake mushrooms as mentioned in the menu. The
flavor of the fish carried out nicely past the seasonings, which added
depth to the dish. A good competitor to House's long-standing sea bass
dish.
The dessert menu is oddly Western (due to French influence in Vietnamese
cuisine?) Very heavy on chocolate. She had a hazelnut mousse/chocolate
torte stacked thing. It consisted of a couple of different layers of
dark and semisweet chocolate cake layers, with a hazelnut mousse on top.
The hazelnut flavor was very subtle, and easy to miss after the strength
of the spice in the sea bass. I had the Pina Colada gelato, which
consisted of a base of pineapple pieces and syrup at the bottom of a
small glass, topped by coconut gelato, with a sprinkle of tiny dark
chocolate pieces on top. The gelato was more like a gelled foam, quite
soft, but with a solid coconut flavor that went well with the pineapple
and followed the sea bass well.
Service was prompt, attentive, and knowledgeable. Our server really
worked the "light touch" thing--palm lightly on back, fingertips on
shoulder and arm, etc., which worked well for me but others on this
forum, judging from past comments, might have found intrusive. Can't
tell you if other servers were doing the same thing or not. We made
several comments about dishes, and honestly came away with the
impression that they welcomed the comments (whether they did or not is a
separate matter). We both found the service to be very good, and we
tipped accordingly high.
When we arrived at 6, the room was reasonably quiet and only about
one-quarter full. By 6:45 or so, it was quite full and the sound level
had picked up to the point that conversation was possible, but at that
busy-restaurant level, not in the hushed-tone level that it started out
at.
The wine list was fairly short; maybe 20 bottles in all. Prices for
bottles seemed to be in the usual dastardly markups (e.g., Echelon 2004
Pinot Noir $25, $7 per glass), but all in the $20-$30 range and the
aforementioned Echelon was the most expensive glass I noticed.
Total was about $78 before tips. Yes, we'll be going back.
Steve
* No, I'm not kidding. There are at least six dishes in the menu that
are marked with a trademark symbol.
--
steve <at> w0x0f <dot> com
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of
arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to
skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, chip shot in the other, body thoroughly
used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"