Ha long

Vietnamese food returns with
country flair to Harvard Square

by Robert Nadeau

Ha Long
35 Dunster Street (the Garage),
Harvard Square, Cambridge
354-4445
Hours
Sun - Thurs, 11 a.m to 10 p.m.;
Fri and Sat, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
All major credit cards
No liquor
Ramped access

Just in time for winter, Harvard Square finally has its own Vietnamese restaurant, serving vast noodle soups of comfort and joy. In fact, Ha Long has quite a full menu, and thus will have marvelous Vietnamese salads for summer, barbecues and stir-fries for spring and fall. It fills a gap, although it is ironically located a short block from the hallowed site of New England's first Vietnamese restaurant, the lamented Rendezvous.

The Rendezvous opened shortly after the fall of Saigon, with lemongrass beef and tiny, super-crisp spring rolls worth fighting for. The owners eventually got lonesome and decamped to a larger Vietnamese-American community.

Since then, the boat people and a changed resettlement policy have given New England dozens and dozens of Vietnamese restaurants, but Ha Long is the first to be re-established in Harvard Square, despite the longstanding interest in Southeast Asian affairs by residents of 02138 and 02139.

Ha Long has most of the greatest hits of this cuisine, plus an authentic country menu promoting the idea that a traditional Vietnamese dinner consists of three courses: soup, a braised dish, and a sautéed dish, served with rice.

Of the four soups listed on the country menu, the sour veggie soup with shrimp ($7.95) struck me as both sweet and sour, in a tamarind kind of way. The broth was light but effective, and the crunchier fillings were fresh tomatoes, cilantro, and perfectly poached shrimp. I liked it, but my heart remains with the great city soup, pho, here translated simple as noodle soup with vegetables, chicken, brisket, rare beef, beef ball, or beef combination ($4.95). Beef combination is the classic, as this is a caramel-rich beef broth spiced with anise; the variety of meats is ideal with the noodles and fresh mix-ins, such as mint leaves and bean-sprouts. Many people add lime juice, hot sauce, even sweet bean paste, but I always taste first, as good pho is rather perfect as it comes.

Another superb soup is the My Tho noodle soup, a fabulous seafood broth carrying phony crab, pork strips, fish sausage, and lots of fat cellophane noodles, with highlights of cilantro, scallion, and caramelized onion. I've never had a Vietnamese seafood soup without flagrant flavorings (pineapple -tomato-hot pepper is a common combination), so this may be censored for the Harvard Square clientele, but what's there is a big winner.

The braised course is represented by a few hot pots, of which I was quite taken by the combination ($7.50). This is mostly fried tofu triangles, with a decent admixture of shrimp and pork strips and a few straw mushrooms -- all in a very savory brown sauce with hints of sour, salty, and spicy.

Sautéed dishes combine various protein sources with various flavorings: vegetables, peanuts and spice, curry, lemongrass and chili, or pickled mustard green. We hit pork and chicken with lemongrass and chili ($7.95) and found it a mildly spicy stir-fry with a wisp of citronella aroma.

Of course, for many of us, Vietnamese food is a quick snack, and you'll find none better than the rice-noodle platter ($5.95), which we had with beef and spring roll. The beef on this platter is exquisite barbecued slices, served with a zesty marinade of lemongrass and garlic, plus a topping of chopped peanuts for extra crunch. Every Vietnamese meal seems to contain some salad, to be eaten in bites with other flavors, and this one is mint and bean sprouts, ideal with beef. The spring roll is a small-caliber, extra-crispy job that takes me back to my first bites of real Vietnamese spring roll almost 20 years ago.

Vietnamese cuisine is rich in salads, and you can amaze your companions safely with the Vietnamese salad with jellyfish ($5.95). The jellyfish turns out to be bland, crunchy strips you might mistake for fettucine, with shrimp, carrots, sweet pickles, and Asian basil in a dressing tasting mostly like sesame.

The tea is jasmine, served hot in a glass. You can also order Vietnamese coffee, hot or iced, with (or without) condensed milk. There's a series of intensely sweetened fruit shakes that are more like desserts than drinks. We tried mango ($2.50) and jackfruit ($2.50), and enjoyed both. Desserts include a tropical-fruit assortment (mostly canned), and a couple of syrupy drinks with candied contents. Sweet silken tofu ($1.95) is the consistency of flan in a gingery syrup, rather comforting. And tapioca pearl ($2.50) is classic British comfort food, by way of Hong Kong and Singapore.

The space, at the back of the Garage and above street level, has been nicely redone in mauve and wood tones, painted brick and green tile. Yes, that makes it clanky-loud at times, but not uncomfortably so, and a quiet background of classical piano tapes helps a lot. Service is willing and accurate, and the lunch crowds on our three visits were cosmopolitan and obviously pleased at such tasty food and moderate prices.

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Ha Long is a good way to end a reviewing year that's had more than the usual portion of Asian flavors, and a deepening and broadening of Greater Boston's Asian-restaurant resources.

My year began wonderfully at the Brookline Elephant Walk and the South End's Zipangu -- the best of fusion kitchens, both. Later high notes were at places like Rangoli (South Indian), Yadanapon (Burmese), and Bangkok Basil (partly Indonesian). Before I open the envelopes, let me remind you that these are the extremes of my reviewing year, which is neither all the restaurants that opened this year, nor all the restaurants in Boston, nor -- for the first time in more than a decade -- all the restaurants reviewed in the Phoenix. It's just what this column has recorded.

Restaurant of the year: Delux Café, true to itself and the young generation.
Best stand-up restaurant: Mercury Bar.
Best fancy restaurant: Zipangu.
Best portobello: Elephant Walk.
Best crab cake: Union Square Bistro.
Appetizer of the year (non-crab or -mushroom): ayum goreng (fried Indonesian chicken) at Bangkok Basil.
Frighten the readers: lambs fry at Saffron Grill.
Best Asian dish: samosa bhel at Rangoli, cut-up fried dumplings as sweet and crunchy as Cracker Jack.
Comeback award: Mary Chung's suan la chow show.