Give Me Some Food

Felix has been working incredibly hard for the last two weeks. In fact, the reason that I'm writing this post right now is because he isn't home yet. So last Saturday, when we got to have a date- I wanted to take him out to one of his favorite kinds of food: Vietnamese.

Bong Su is a fairly new restaurant in SOMA- it would be great place for a dinner/movie date near the Metreon because you wouldn't need to park your car twice. If you have ever been to Tamarine in Palo Alto, Bong Su is owned by the same group that is now trying their luck at a second restaurant. The interior looks very similar to Tamarine:

So far, I think things are going pretty well at Bong Su. Felix and I were surprised with how big the restaurant was, and Felix was even a little disappointed when we first sat down:

"I think it's hard to run a restaurant with so many tables."

that's Felix-code for:

"I think this dinner is going to suck."

Yet Bong Su exceeded our expectations and catered to all of their tables without sacrificing our service and food. We started off with the Bong Su appetizer sampler:

Spring rolls, taro root egg rolls, tea beef rolls and papaya salad were served with fish sauce and peanut sauce. Felix loves the spring rolls, but I always find them bland (no matter where we go). I liked the taro root rolls because it was nice to see vegetarian egg rolls for once- and I didn't think any taste was compromised by leaving out the meat. The papaya salad was really refreshing and cleansed your palate in between bites.

Our main dishes were excellent. The Caramelized Black Cod had a wonderful sweetness to it and the fish was buttery and flaky. The Shaking Beef was basic- filet chopped into cubes and stir-fried with garlic, onions and watercress. Yet both of these types of dishes I had tried before at other Vietnamese digs. The dish I hadn't had were the crab noodles:

These came in a pot where all of the noodles were on top and all of the crab was on the bottom- it was kind of neat to wade through the noodles to find big chucks of crab. Yum.

After dinner, our server came around with a complementary tea service:

It's funny how excited we got over this free tea because tea is kind of just like...water.  Yet since it was presented in such a nice fashion and served with a little sugar covered seed- we totally fell for their ploy and acted like they had just given us free lobster with fois gras sauce.

The dessert menu didn't look fascinating, so we settled on the carrot cake. It was presented well:

The cake was moist and the fruit went very well with it. I had never thought of fruit and carrot cake as being complementary, but there it was.

In the end, the bill might keep me from going back- over $100 for both of us, but it was very close to a perfect meal.

Bong Si
311 Third St.
Sana Francisco
415-536-5800

* I apologize for the title of this entry...it's a warm-up game we play in my theater class (Zip Zap Bong)...and it's really late and I can't think of anything more creative right now...