Eat Great Cheap 2016 Extra-Cheap |
Hidden along a dim hallway in the maze-like Eden Center, this folksy Vietnamese cafe is worth taking the time to seek out. The kitchen excels across the board. Bánh xèo, the seafood-and-sprout-studded crepe, is lighter and crisper than most. Summer rolls of barbecue or shredded pork come overstuffed with mint and lettuce. Rice and rice-noodle dishes sport a variety of savory toppers such as lacquered quail and sweet-salty marinated pork. Soups are heady bowls—try the hu tieu with shrimp, barbecue pork, and egg noodles. To drink, there’s fresh-squeezed lime soda—we like to get it unsweetened and add just a bit of sugar. When you’re done, the herbal-medicine shop across the way makes for a fun detour. You can stock up on items like licorice root, said to be good for digestion.
Also good: Baby clams with rice crackers; young-lotus-root salad; vermicelli with pork-stuffed grape leaves.
See what other restaurants made our 2016 Cheap Eats list. This article appears in our May 2016 issue of Washingtonian.
Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
