Artful Vietnamese in central Tacoma deserves your attention now so you can dine in later

It would be neither impossible nor inadvisable to build an entire meal from appetizers at Saigon House, a six-month-old Vietnamese restaurant in central Tacoma.

Start at the top, with item A1: the house spring rolls, bouncy rice paper filled with green leaf lettuce, sticks of cucumber, a couple of mint leaves and nem nuong, a Vietnamese pork sausage sliced in half lengthwise and grilled. The star here, though, is the surprising crunch — not of anything green but rather bits of crispy wontons.

In lieu of common peanut sauce, available if you insist, chef and owner Dung Tran (pronounced “Yuh-ng”) serves these Saigon Rolls with a savory oyster sauce.

Such nuance permeates his menu, stacked with Vietnamese classics and dotted with Thai and Chinese influence.

Scroll down to A4, another starred offering: chicken wings doused in chopped garlic bathed in butter, a mound of which might form at the bottom of your takeout container, waiting for a spoon. The garlic-averse (do you exist?) will find refuge in the more classic fish-sauce chicken wings, with a bonus bowl of the glaze on the side.

Skip to A6, home of a fish cake enrobed in bright green rice flakes: Tran pops his version of cha cá com xanh on a stick, four bite-sized rounds to an order. It’s the appetizer two couples would request promptly upon sitting down, along with tamarind whiskey sours from manager Dan Chau.

Côm translates generally to cooked rice or simply a meal (as in the Spanish comida), but in this instance it refers to a specific, and labor-intensive, form of toasted sticky rice, harvested young, while still green. The grains are first winnowed in a bamboo tray to separate the grain from its hull, then dry-roasted over a wood fire before being winnowed and pounded again. This process, explains celebrated cookbook author Andrea Nguyen on her site Viet World Kitchen, repeats until the grain has flattened into a disc resembling a rolled oat — naturally green, but made more so by adding juice extracted from young rice plants.

At its prime, the flakes portend a milky flavor, ideal for fried shrimp or sweet rice dessert cakes. Chau recalls his family making côm in Vietnam, but the Saigon House recipe uses commercially available flakes, called côm dep, bought in bags and dyed green with food coloring. Luckily, these fish cakes travel well, accompanied by a sweet and sour dipping sauce.

Tran, who has operated Green Garden Pho in Silverdale since 2011 and learned to cook by shadowing a good friend and fellow restaurant owner, said he wanted to “build something that not everyone else has.” Added Chau, “He wanted to be different than other Vietnamese restaurants.”

Another such dish is the Singapore noodles, under the wok-fried section, a mound of thin rice noodles stir-fried with curry powder that lends a pleasant dryness, counteracted by a generous portion of mung bean sprouts. Coincidentally, laughed Tran, he learned this recipe from a white chef on YouTube.

Where the protein decision grows troublesome, turn to the phrase “Saigon Special” as an appetizer, pho, vermicelli or rice dish for a bite of everything, including a quiche peppered with mushrooms and chao tôm, a shrimp skewer served on an actual sugar cane.

SAIGON HOUSE VIETNAMESE SPECIALS

As with fellow newcomers VK Viet Kitchen in the Lincoln District, Saigon House wants to change perceptions of what a South Sound Vietnamese restaurant can be.

“In my mind, I’m thinking a mom-and-pop restaurant,” said Chau, who left his job as manager of Noi Thai, an upscale restaurant in Seattle to join Tran, an old friend. “Everything is mismatched tables, chairs and spoons and all that stuff. I walked into this beautiful Vietnamese restaurant.”

Plopped into a plaza at 2505 S. 38th St., on the north side of Tacoma Mall, the space previously housed a Plato’s Closet. The interior was bare bones before Tran hired a team to modernize it, painting neutral tones, hanging rattan shades above and adding pops of red in a geometric design framing the partially visible kitchen that centers the restaurant. A mostly black-and-white mural of a typical scene in Ho Chi Minh City — the largest in Vietnam with 21 million people in the metropolitan area and the restaurant’s namesake — overtakes one wall.

When picking up lunch or dinner, pause a moment to take in the scenery. In the familiar environs of your own kitchen, note the care with which Tran and his team packed those takeout boxes: broths for pho and bún in their own delis, the vermicelli and herb medley in a separate box, a lettuce leaf or two with pickled carrots and daikon below, sauces in individual containers suitable for dipping.

Then imagine walking inside to a buzzing restaurant, where friends gather over a wooden table busting at the seams with real plates, covered in the color and flavor indicative of Vietnamese cuisine.

I eagerly await the chance to return for the Obama/Hanoi-style bún, with a housemade pork patty, grill marks visible. A savvy marketing decision — it’s one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes, said Chau — the menu refers to the former U.S. president’s famous 2016 meal with the late Anthony Bourdain.

They created these lettuce wraps over a modest table inside a tiny, busy restaurant in Hanoi, sitting atop stools too short for both of them. For us, the bar at Saigon House awaits.

Saigon House Tacoma

▪ 2505 S. 38th St., Tacoma, 253-503-3010, saigonhouse.us

▪ Hours: daily 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m.

▪ Menu: most appetizers $7.50-$9; pho, bún, rice and wok dishes $11-$18.50; milk tea $4

▪ Details: order online or by phone; outdoor sidewalk seating coming soon

This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 11:05 AM.