My girlfriend Haryn and I decided to go out for an impromptu dinner out.
Sometimes we like to wait for new openings to get a chance to “grow their legs” before checking them out.
We didn’t feel like granting this place the leeway. They didn’t really need it, despite the scalding yelp reviews I discovered after the fact.
After almost needing a nap because clearly there was some indica that snuck in to my “try to be strictly sativa” nug jar, and Haryn needing me to get the jaws of life out because her necklace got caught on the seatbelt and she was stuck behind the wheel in the drivers seat for a good five minutes before I figured out to stop standing on the sidewalk and just go rescue her, we made it to the Wilshire hot spot.
Forget about the fact that not one thing at the Vietnamese inspired place couldn’t be made with out cilantro, not one thing was less than awesome.
Here are my favorite dishes in order:
Chicken Dumplings – self assembly with a lettuce wrap.
Brussles Sprouts – fried with shrimp rice crisps and purple basil.
Crab Spring Roll – with chervil and yuzu.
Scallops – tiny little guys wading in a bath of light almost Bernaise-esque sauce with a quince/apricot like “sea-buckthorn” paste.
Amberjack – my least exciting dish but it was light and not overly pickled.
The Cocktails – #18 was the one to go for but we’re glad we tried #38 just to know it’s tartness beneath coconut frothiness exists.
The Desserts were even better and I’m not a dessert girl (literally, we almost got an egg dish and a sweet potato dish instead, but the waiter made us get these two desserts…)
The lime was rad.
But the coconut made me cry. That take a minute, eyes closed, head posed, sit in silence type of moments.
I don’t normally dream of desserts and I’d go back for this shit.
Red Medicine: NOT the Robitussin (i.e. Blech!) kind!