Yahoo! - washingtonian

Very Best Restaurants: Taste Of Saigon

Very Best Listing | Very Best by Cuisine | Very Best by Location

Taste Of Saigon **
Rockville, ¢

Many Asian restaurants are family affairs, with the parents and children pitching in to run the business. Taste of Saigon is family-run, but it is bigger, better, and more elegant than most. The dining area is attractive and comfortable, with murals of rural Vietnam, black lacquered chairs, marble-topped tables, and glass-block dividers.

Matriarch-chef Ba Tu and her family, who once ran a restaurant in Saigon, have worked hard to create a place here that represents the highlights of Vietnamese cooking. They have succeeded and added a few French specialties, appropriate for a country that at its culinary best offered two sophisticated cuisines.

Appetizer highlights from the menu of more than 100 items include grilled beef in grape leaves and minced shrimp paste on crab claws. Main-course recommendations include the curries made with coconut milk, caramel chicken, and a whole crispy fish. Boneless stuffed quail and Rock Cornish game hen stuffed with ground pork are special fowl dishes. The adventuresome can try frog's legs, either deep-fried or in a casserole with seasoned rice. Both the black-bean sauce and the steamed fish are excellent, but the sauce is too powerful for the delicate fish. The solution:Order each of them, but with a different companion.

Taste Of Saigon , 410 Hungerford Dr., Rockville; 301-424-7222. Open daily for lunch and dinner. MapIt!

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

Return to Restaurant & Entertaining Directory