A paradise of Vietnamese food
May 30, 2001 | 12:00am
How should a Vietnamese restaurant look like? Since all we ever have at local Vietnamese fast-food outlets are dishes that could be had in a few minutes – noodles, spring rolls and an occasional bowl of rice toppings – we never bother to look up and admire the surroundings.
That’s why Dusit Hotel Nikko Manila’s Thien Duong is a vision of paradise. Not surprisingly, thien duong means paradise in Vietnamese.
Except for the lacquered Four Seasons panels on the walls, you wouldn’t think you were in an Asian restaurant. Thien Duong’s interiors hew closely to the French colonial influence: classic, neat and uncluttered. Time seems to be at a stand-still in the restaurant, leaving you with nothing to do but feast on the food.
When you enter the restaurant, a food attendant dressed in an ao dai greets you and directs you to your table. You notice the walls are of dark wood yet there is an airiness to the room. The large glass windows facing the Japanese garden nearby let in lots of sunshine. Chandeliers discreetly add more light into the restaurant. Appropriate muzak, mostly of French songs and ballroom hits, fills the room; but it never intrudes into your conversation and can even be the topic of conversation if your talk should come to a pause.
Thien Duong restaurant manager Siri-Orn Aramvit says the Manila restaurant is only the second Vietnamese restaurant in the Dusit Hotel Nikko chain. A third Thien Duong restaurant is run by the hotel chain as an independent Vietnamese restaurant in Tokyo, Japan.
"Vietnamese food is popular because people are now concerned with healthy food," says Aramvit.
The original Thien Duong restaurant in Thailand has been a wellspring of Vietnamese cooking in Bangkok for the past 12 years. Compared with Thai cooking, Vietnamese food is too light for most Thai diners who are used to the rich curries and sauces of Thai cooking. The Bangkok original serves 72 items, from appetizers to desserts, while the Manila outlet already serves 44 of these. Within the next year-and-a-half, all of these items will also be available in Manila.
Dusit Hotel Nikko sous chef Dave Laureano had only 10 days to master the preparation of the dishes now offered at the restaurant at the Thien Duong in Bangkok.
"Everything just happened so quickly," he said. "It’s a good thing that some of the Thai chefs from Bangkok are here in Manila to help us out when we opened the restaurant last April."
Managing the restaurant’s kitchen was a challenge for chef Laureano since he doesn’t specialize in Asian cuisine. Prior to Thien Duong, he was in charge with preparing the hotel’s European offerings.
"It is really healthy food," he says. "We use only fresh vegetables, and there’s very little fat or beef in the cooking."
The recipes in the Manila restaurant are the same as those used in Bangkok. In fact, if diners wish for something a bit spicier, they could request this from their food attendant.
"The spice is really in the sauce," he declares.
Like most Asian cuisines, Vietnamese cooking leans heavily towards vegetable and seafood. Meat is not so popular among the Vietnamese. If ever meat is used, they prefer beef over pork, because the Vietnamese find the flavor of pork too fatty for their taste.
As in Chinese cooking, ingredients are chopped into little pieces before they are cooked. Sauces are also quite popular in Vietnamese cooking, particularly its fish sauce, known as nuoc mam, which is added to many dishes and is even used as a salad dressing.
The French influence is also evident in Vietnamese soup. The basic soup stock is actually a consommé. Noodles are often added to this soup and is the base for almost all noodle dishes.
However, unlike other Asian cookery, Vietnamese food is rarely fried. It also doesn’t boil dishes, since most are commonly stir-fried.
When we visited the restaurant recently, it was a quiet afternoon. Filipino restaurant manager Dinia Ortega says when the restaurant opened last April 22, it has already been deluged by hotel guests and businessmen who were looking for something different. On the first day, the restaurant had 42 covers.
"A hotel guest, who has been to Thien Duong in Bangkok, described the restaurant to be elegant," Ortega adds.
And what is Vietnamese fine dining all about? Let’s just say that this diner, who knows nothing of Vietnamese food but noodles and spring rolls, was terribly impressed. It is food that cannot be eaten on-the-go; it has to be savored slowly to appreciate the myriad delicate flavors Vietnamese cooking has to offer.
We started with two appetizers, both filling for those watching their weights: Thien Duong Kha Vi, a sampler plate of Goi Cuon (fresh spring rolls), Bo La Lot (beef in "Good King Henry" leaves), Chao Tom (sugarcane skewer of shrimp) and Nem Nuong (charcoal-grilled pork balls), and Cha Gio, fried spring rolls stuffed with chicken, shrimp, pork and transparent vermicelli. If you think that’s a lot, it is.
The Thien Duong sampler plate is already a meal in itself. Sweet-sour pickled vegetable served in a bowl and what we thought was a fancy arrangement of vegetable sticks were really appetizer side dishes. You take a piece of lettuce, your choice of vegetable and an appetizer, roll it into the lettuce leaf with the pickle as if you were rolling lumpia, and have a bite. That, we were told, was the best way of dining on the diners. Try the rolling the spring roll in a bed of green and what do you have? Lumpia in lumpia.
By the time we were done with everything on the sampler plate and the fried springs, we were ready to call it a day. But there was still more to come.
The soup course was Pho, beef and rice noodle soup. After the appetizers, the soup was simply heavenly, full with the flavor of beef and scrumptious with the hint of mint leaves.
All these delicately flavored courses were followed by the entrée. This time we were served Ga Nep, charcoal grilled chicken served with deep-fried glutinous rice. Think chicken inasal and you would be close, except that this chicken barbecue is unlike any barbecue we’ve taste. The chicken skin is sweetish, while the chicken meat is tender.
Do watch out for the fried glutinous rice. Ground and shaped into a small patty, it is deceptive in its size. A bite is enough; if you eat the thing whole, you’ll end up feeling like you’ve eaten two bowls of steamed rice.
Dessert was Co Tran, longan pudding. You are sure to swallow a morsel of longan with each spoonful of this milky pudding, making it a truly tasty treat.
As we ordered coffee, we joined the next table of journalists who were trying out Thien Duong’s offerings. There we had two more servings of dessert: Hat Tran Chau, sweet sago with cantaloupe and flavored with coconut milk, and Chuoi Va Thomchien Gion, banana fritters with vanilla ice cream. Go for the sago, since it is quite popular nowadays. It is light and creamy, and the sensation of tiny sago will tickle your tongue. The banana fritters is really more maruya than turon. With a scoop of ice cream, it becomes a delectable experience that children will love.
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