Non Viet Hai
WE’RE elbow to elbow, cheek to cheek, squeezed into a table that we nearly didn’t get – as I forgot which name I booked under. Please tell me you did book, Leo had texted from the restaurant as the waiter was on the brink of showing him the door.
By the time Gordon and I roll off Glasgow's Great Western Road into a wave of noise and exotic smells, waiters breathing in to get past tables, food being carried over sitting heads, the crisis is over.
Yes, I remembered the name. Yes, Leo has a table just beside the front door. And, yes, they really are so busy on a midweek night that we would not have got in without that booking.
Within minutes we’re caught up in an old-school menu ritual. It goes like this. I call out the dish we fancy, the waiter replies with the number. Shaking beef? Number 8. Rice paper rolls? Number 2B. Salt and pepper squid? Number 10B. And so it proceeds until we end with the sizzling seafood. Number 15, since you ask. And we nod when offered prawn crackers. They’ll come with their own number. Number £2, but we won’t realise that til we get the bill.
If Vietnamese is the new Chinese in Glasgow then freshness is the new fried. The meal sets off a crackling pace with summer rolls of soft rice paper, vermicelli, fresh basil and coriander, punchy chilli, fish sauce and lime sauce, and slivers of beef. Light, refreshing, yet unctuous.
And then we’re onto pork rolls, crispy this time, packed with rich meat, mint leaves served alongside, and another sweetly savoury traditional dipping sauce. This is food taken at a canter.
We chat, we nod at particular flavours, hands criss-crossing across the table to lift food and now the shaking beef arrives. If there’s ever an example needed of the benefits of a long, slow marinade this is it. The meat is crisp, seared, carmelised on the outside after a fast toss round a hot wok, but inside it’s supremely delicate after that soak in soy and garlic and probably some sherry.
This may be a mainstream dish in Vietnamese restaurants in the US, though apparently not cooked much in homes in Vietnam, but done well, as it is here, it’s a revelation. Chunk after chunk disappears before we turn our attention to Indochine beef, this time containing slivers of sirloin. Tossed in a lemon dressing, shallots, chilli, coriander binding the whole thing together into a smooth textured and, to me anyway, delicious dish. Not so enthusiastic thumbs up from others around the table.
If we press pause on the meal right now, pay up and leave it would still have been a light, refreshing triumph. We don’t. We press on through a fairly ordinary salt and pepper squid with little to differentiate it from the same dish available at restaurants up and down this very city tonight.
Stewed beef brisket sounded appetising on the menu promising aromatic herbs and vibrant flavours. On the plate it’s just a dark and dense experience.
Hard, too, to distinguish it from the carmelised pork belly and egg which should, on paper at least, zing with caramel fish sauce and coconut juice. It is simply stewed into one long, indistinguishable and rather ordinary flavour.
It’s fair to say that by the time we arrive at the not-sizzling-anymore seafood platter the sizzle has begun to disappear from us too. This is an instantly familiar concoction of the usual seafood suspects in a pale and tasteless sauce that once again is reminiscent of the generic dishes found in the off-piste section of British-Chinese restaurant menus throughout the ages.
Hey, you can’t have everything. A meal of two-halves says Gordon. And how often is life a long gentle downhill after some invigorating starters, we laugh. We’ll not hold it against them. As the packed tables show Non Viet’s fresh and vibrant flavours are a buzz, even if they can fade a bit too early.
Non Viet Hai
609 Great Western Road
Glasgow
0141 334 3090
Menu: Traditional Vietnamese flavours, summer rolls, shaking beef, caramelised pork. Fresh vibe. 4/5
Service: Coped well on a very busy evening, pleasant and efficient with the emphasis on efficiency. 4/5
Atmosphere: Cheek to cheek seating, bustling, hustling atmosphere. A pleasant place to be when busy. 5/5
Price: Summer rolls and other starter dishes at £6.50, mains reasonably priced up to £12.90 for that shaking beef. 3/5
Food: Hard to argue with the light, fresh, zingy flavours from the starter half of the menu, or the shaking beef, a bit less assured deep into the mains. 7/10
23/30
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