An Nhau: so good I wrote my mama about it...

No seriously, I emailed my mom that I was excited about An Nhau opening and she responded:

Good luck to your friends' business, it's good for U to have a good place to hang out but hope U don't waist [sic] time joining them & their cool business.

Mama Ly's cheeky no? I'm half certain she thinks my foodie devotion and food photography has somehow stolen me from my rightful path to Med School :D ...and possibly serves as a looming threat to steal me away from my second Masters too :P I'm also under the impression my mom thinks I'm at Bayside High (go tigers! ;)) and this place will be my new "Max's" ...which...you know, I don't remember any asians on Saved by the Bell!! >:( Hehe. ANYHOODLE, Mama Ly didn't know the name of this place was....An Nhau...which would...make quite a diff initial impression :P More on that later :) This is going to be quite a disjointed entry for now--I'm trying to just rush this one out.

Kinda looks like a lovingly gnawed thumbs up right? hehe...and it is!! super perky pokey enthusiastic thumbs up with 3 snaps in Z formation for An Nhau! :)

What you need to know is, this is one of my fave spots now EVER in the city and it has galvanized me to publicize the place and the owners vigorously b/c they're so earnest, dedicated, and chill. They get my beef with the ills and ilk of 'vietnamese' crap and pseudo vietnamese hotspots blowing up in the city that the dilletantes fawn over in the new exoticization of a cuisine and leaving some like us in the dust when all u want is a taste of home--or just a taste of food you are accustomed and entitled to! :) I don't have a lot of fave restaurants in the city--or in my life period...I think An Nhau has become the 3rd ever! :) I'm probably imbuing more to the presence of this restaurant in my life than just...a new restaurant I've been looking for ever since I moved out East. I'm definitely not looking through gossamer-veiled eyes...An Nhau has room for improvements and I anticipate some growing pains, but the potential and promise, and based on what I've gustatorially lived with the stuff they've given me, I'm positively glowing with optimism!

In Vietnamese ăn nhậu refers generally when to the older menfolks get together for (many) drinks and tapas-like feasting. Think...a home-grown edition of lads at the pub gaily, raucously feasting on various meats and homegrown beers. Think...a crew of Bourdains with Bourdain-sian appreciation of asian charcuterie, complete with Bourdainsian cheeky dialogue wherein the mens rib on each other and heartily chortling and beer flows as freely as the small plates do. I dunno it's been a while since i've been anywhere near the vicinity any of my dad and his friends' festivities, which could vary in mellowness as well but just...u know, overall lads at the pub feel! with the vitality of youth...for the most part :)

The thing i'm MOST excited about is that food we/vietnamese eat at home--the staples we eat w/ rice that we don't eat in restaurants when I grew up in Sai Gon (kinda like the 'loofah' soups and claypot fish thing and rau moung etc)...the stuff that's always around for family events, at temple (no not as in yeshiva but buddhist) and communal meals etc--like trung duc or the braised pork belly w/ eggs and our version of curry and....lots of things that don't even pop up in restos in California and vietnamese-central BOLSA! Strikes a low timbre, thick, hearty chord in me :) That...is new and edgy indeed :)

Don't you love that little nub of tendon/ meat?? I always get such a kick out of it when I eat drumsticks and that pokes out more often than on ribs. TEEHEEE!! I really liked the ribs--the seasoning is vietnamese though I can't place what's in it right now since it's been a couple days, but I loved it! You wouldn't think of it as Vietnamese but a lot of things like 'trung thit kho'--which is the long awaited braised pork belly w/ eggs isn't somethign strikingly Vietnamese when u look at it but it is...definitively so (and a northern dish) that u eat with rice. My grams makes me tubs of it when I visit and it stores well so I can eat that with pickled mustard greens by the barrel when I get back to the city :D

ANYWAY, the restaurant itself (on N. 8th & Bedford) adjacent to its bánh mì shop (which i heart many times!) is meant to be more of a slowed down, chilled out version of what I remember the dins and vibrancy of when people ăn nhậu (yes it's a verb phrase)...kinda like the idea of tapas bars as in Spain minus the frenzy and bustle but who knows, maybe that's what Dung (the owner) is looking for (in my interpretation anyway). Mellow spot where ya'll come and hang out and grab something to eat,bounce out w/ relative ease and quickness.

The bestest was...pretty much a deconstructed banh mi and very typical fare for...an nhau hehe. Honestly, they invited a bunch of us over for a tasting of a small fraction of the menu and had this around just to nibble on--which we special-requested during the soft opening too! ^_^ and then we proceeded to convince the people adjacent to try some and then pushed it on more people like pate-crack! :) the Mayo...seriously...this is a whole 'nother entry...which kinda defeats my usual elaborations on the food period, but I'll fawn and nitpick and digress to semantics in cooking but....yeah!! i even made...hearts of it after! :P

And...this is what i proceeded to do! Honestly I just felt very at east and relaxed and filled with youthful enthusiasm for everythign they brought out! The salad could've been a little bigger, with more of the green than red cabbage (personal reference)--which could expand into other things but anyway...RIBS were my fave, the imperial shrimp was mystifying--it was apocryphal but I knew what I was eating tho it didn't look wholly familiar!

The back patio is lovely w/ about 4-5 garden day bed with awning things and other tables. Having watched Dung and his partner Vu/David put together each piece slowly over the past couple mos, it's been interesting to see it come together, the stories of where each piece was picked up, what for--the mantle of the bar itself is pretty much...a giant sliver of a tree complete with gaps and nooks and crannies where the tree divides or took root.

Then there's the pho--rocks! my socks! My grams said the key isn't so much how long you need to let the stock simmer or reduce--but that you season it well prior to adding the bones (which should def be roasted to bring out more flavor prior to adding to the stock!) She was really confused and gave me a 'bish pls' look when i gawked at her saying good stock only takes 2 hours generally. HHEHEHEHEEH...

That's a proper piece of beef my friend. And--I think Chi mentioned there was meatballs available!! ^_^ our meatballs are diff from....other cuisine's meatballs, and comes often as a variant on pho which isn't readily available in nyc it seems!

ANDDDDD...if u look at closely at the preceeding pics, u can see a golden ephemeral film of fatty micelles which comes from the nước béo!! It's like...the In-N-Out secret menu dude...u just gotta know the off menu things. This...is the mark of 'authentic' I HATE THAT WORD but...Dung obvy knows what he's doing and gives a shit enough to have it around and put it to use instead of watering down or sterilizing things here and there to make it a commercial success.

Here's dessert b/f I start railing about tangential things...

So back to the inclusion of the fatty skimmings from the broth (which is what is is so u know it adds more depth of flavor too ^_^)...Like I've mentioned w/ Sorella, there are times when you can tell the chef/restaurant is thorough and thoughtful with a dish. Sometimes things seem so small and insignificant but its inclusion kinda just shows you the dedication and attention to detail that's is very heartwarming to see. It's about the food, about something to take pride in!"Scary" ingredients, components and all--it's insulting when people get 'scared' of certain things in a dish--i don't mean the hesitancy and whatnot, but the resistance to get the real deal, as is, when people 'want to experience' the food of other cultures. (I hate the word "other" in context of 'othering' and 'normative' -.-).

Sorry but good 'ethnic' food is how food is in its genuine form, not scrubbed out and spiffed up with a polish to be accepted and questioned as 'authentic' by dilletantes with a itchy trigger finger on yelp. And the restauranteurs so anxious to placate the noob tongue with an inflated, egoist sense of taste -.- that's another story :) And the younger new vietnamese restauranteurs in the city--I get the difficulties in having straddled the cultural/generational palate divide but...just b/c u can get away with being sloppy with construction of a dish and a little thoughtless/forgetful in the enormity of what goes into a dish...or maybe you want to add a new twist to it (which I'm guilty of consciously or subconsciously)...but just b/c u can get away with it and perpetuate it past the aforementioned n00b tongues doesn't MEAN you've done grand task for yourself or your foods -.-

There's been a proliferation of crap in the hype of Vietnamese food being the next "it" thing, and with the cult-like fanaticisms for all things hip and trendy in NYC, it seems other parties are at the helm which only inwardly fuels further miseducation and misappropriation of a culture and its foods--this is much different in this day and age, and in this city given the power of the twitterati and the mentality of millenials and those on the cusp of this new...crazy user-generated rage...but...there's more, and this isn't the forum and my blog is far from a soapbox. I RANT...and digress...and...I end here. When their full menu is up, which...will cover so much important ground neglected in restaurants in CA and anywhere else--tapping into that home cooking that seldom sees the light of day let alone the food that still hasn't made its debut to the NY/East Coast culinary stage and palate.

Seriously...so good I wrote my mama about it...a gleeful bridge in culture and generational gap--let alone the...pop culture gap :P