FOOD: Eden’s Huong Viet Deserves Spot on ‘Very Best’ List

By JIMMY SCARANO
Falls Church Times Staff

December 25, 2009

This week, Washingtonian’s much-anticipated, always controversial, and never dull “100 Very Best Restaurants” issue hit newsstands.  The comprehensive list of D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia hot spots will be the go-to dining guide for many restaurant-goers in the New Year.

No restaurant inside the City of Falls Church boundaries made the top 100, but there were a host of places within shouting distance that garnered acclaim.  Chief among those is the uber-expensive Falls Church destination 2941, whose inventive French fare landed it at #6 overall.   It is the highest-ranked restaurant outside of D.C.  Willow (#39) and Liberty Tavern (#75), two Arlington restaurants that participated in the Falls Church Farmers Market Chef Demonstrations earlier this year, also made the cut.

But from a City of Falls Church perspective, by far the most intriguing aspect of the list is the selection of Vietnamese restaurants.  Present, Four Sisters, and Minh’s are the only three places in the top 100 specializing in cuisine from the Southeast Asian nation.  You may notice that none of those three are in the City’s Eden Center (Four Sisters used to be, but is now in Merrifield).

I respect the list and the work that went into putting it together.  The task of whittling the area’s booming restaurant scene down to 100 eateries is an unenviable one to say the least.  But I believe the Eden Center’s Huong Viet got shafted.  It is the one restaurant in the City limits that I can make a legitimate case for—and as the food writer for the Times, I feel an obligation to do exactly that.

I have been to Present, Four Sisters, and Minh’s multiple times.  All of them are excellent restaurants that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anyone.  I don’t think any of them should be removed from the list.  But if you’re going to include them, you’ve got to find a place for Huong Viet as well.

I eat Vietnamese food on a weekly basis.  I cook Vietnamese food at home.  And when I want straight-forward delicious preparations, Huong Viet is the place I go.  Yes, there are misses on its epically long menu, but any Vietnamese restaurant in the area has exactly the same pitfalls.

Four Sisters is consistently satisfying, but it doesn’t hit the same high-notes as Huong Viet — the grilled meats aren’t as mouth-watering, the spring rolls not as addictive, the stir-fries not as complex.  Minh’s, an Arlington gem, is better in some of its execution (it has the best grilled pork by a mile and half in the whole region), but across the board many dishes aren’t up to par.  And Present? Well, Present has some of the most refined Vietnamese food you’ll ever eat, but in the end Huong Viet deserves to be right alongside it, if a little behind.

So how did this happen?  How did a restaurant that is consistent, well-priced, and on par or better than places in the same category fall short?

I believe there are several factors at play.

One of them is something I touched on a few weeks ago in my story about an episode of NPR’s Kojo Nnamdi show centered on Vietnamese food.  Washingtonian Food Editor Todd Kliman was a guest on the show and made the statement that the best Vietnamese places in the area are no longer in the Eden Center.  He was adamant about the fact that Present, Four Sisters, and Minh’s were the three best expressions of Vietnamese food around.

I think that this theory is more about making a statement that provokes conversation and debate than it is about actual food.  I think Kliman likes the irony of the whole thing. I’ve seen him repeat that statement several times in print.  Obviously, including Huong Viet in the top 100 issue would undermine his theory.

In more general terms, though, I believe Huong Viet’s being left off is indicative of a larger problem.  There is simply a bias against ethnic restaurants if they aren’t at least somewhat westernized.  Of the 100 “Very Best Restaurants” named this year, over 80% are European or American (trust me, I counted). And of the small percentage that have an Indian, Middle Eastern, Latin, or Asian slant to their menus, almost all are somewhat catered to Western clientele.  Is there no place for a no-frills ethnic restaurant with good food on the “Very Best” list?

Washingtonian does a great job of scouring the area for such places for its annual “Cheap Eats” issue, but the cheap eats seldom make the cut for the “Very Best.”  I would like to see that change next year, beginning with Huong Viet.