Yahoo! - washingtonian

Best Bargain Restaurants: Bangkok-vientiane

Best Bargain Listing | Best Bargain by Cuisine | Best Bargain by Location

Bangkok-vientiane
Falls Church

Anchovy fanciers don't have to limit their repertoire to pizza and pan bagna anymore. Instead they can gorge on the lao sean dard at Bangkok-Vientiane. This Laotian delicacy brings together sweet, marinated beef and a pungent, salty anchovy dipping sauce.

Bangkok-Vientiane is a local hangout for Laotians as well as Vietnamese and Thais. This makes sense, since Laos is culinarily and geographically between those two countries. And food at this family-run storefront has a real homey quality.

Sean nam tok, "waterfall" beef, is delicious--rare beef, lemon juice, hot pepper, and mint leaves tossed together. Also good are the mok gai, chicken and rice cloaked in a banana leaf with coconut-flavored sauce; the papaya salad, a "coleslaw" of shredded green papaya, shrimp, tomato, beef jerky, and hot peppers; and lab ped, another "salad" of duck, green beans, mint, parsley, and scallions. These last two come with sticky rice, and the protocol is to use your fingers to down a clump of rice and then food.

For great starters, order the chicken pâté, with onion, mint, hot peppers, parsley, and scallions, and the cigar-shaped fried spring rolls, plump with chicken, crab, bean-thread noodles, and mushrooms.

If mangoes are in season, try the mango with sticky rice for dessert. If they're not, console yourself with smooth-as-silk coconut-milk flan.

Bangkok-vientiane , 926-A West Broad Street, Falls Church; 703/534-0095. Open Sunday through Thursday 11:30 am to 10 pm, Friday and Saturday 11:30 am to 11 pm. AE, DC, MC, V. MapIt!

QUALITY: ****Excellent; *** Superior; **Very Good; * Good
PRICE RANGE: $$$= Very Expensive; $$ Expensive; $=Moderate; ¢=Inexpensive

Return to Restaurant & Entertaining Directory