Review: Nam Van's best is bubbles

Sweet smoky grilled chicken served over rice vermicelli, one of several vermicelli bowls on the menu at Nam Van Noodle Cafe. (Credit: Johnathan L. Wright)

If Northern Nevada has one culinary commandment, it is this: Let there be sushi (all-you-can-eat, that is).

If our region has a second culinary commandment, it is this: Let there be pho. Everyone hereabouts, save for determinedly rural types, seems to live within a reasonable drive of the essential Vietnamese noodle soup.

Folks in the sprawling subdivisions along Pyramid Highway certainly do, now that Nam Van Noodle Café has come to Sparks Crossing, a suburban souk on Los Altos Parkway composed of the usual chain stores and traffic irritants.

Pho stumbles

Unfortunately, the pho at Nam Van isn't all the neighborhood might hope for.

The broth is tentative. It lacks the deep, layered flavor that is a pho fundamental. I taste neither the rich, meaty essence extracted from simmered beef bones, nor the gusts of flavor imparted by star anise and cloves.

My combo pho is decently portioned with beef, beef balls and connective tissue, but its garnishes disappoint, too. The pho arrives with only one lime wedge — an insufficient number to yield sufficient juice to cut beef fattiness — and with only two mingy sprigs of basil with small leaves past their prime.

Please: More lime! Fresher basil!

Full bowls

There's condiment trouble, too, at Nam Van Noodle Café. Rice vermicelli bowls are served with a fish sauce-based condiment that is too salty; it needs more lime juice and sugar to bring its flavor into balance.

Condiment aside, the vermicelli bowls are acceptable, with the grilled chicken version generously supplied with sweet-smoky chunks of poultry that don't run out before the noodles do. I like that.

Bubble Brigade

Nam Van has high ceilings and tall, light-gathering windows, as is the case these days with shopping center clusters. Service is friendly.

But when things gets busy, it's tough for just one waitress to attend to tables and to folks ordering to-go drinks from among Nam Van's dozens of slushies, smoothies, flavored milks, coffee drinks and Vietnamese tea drinks.

The tea drinks — either hot or iced, made plain or with milk — can be customized with tapioca "pearls" (often called "bubbles" or "boba") fashioned from coconut pulp. These orbs add chewy texture and sweet flavors (green apple, mango, lychee, pineapple, and so on) to the drinks. They're worth a try.

Vietnamese version

My companion and I receive more friendly smiles from a woman who shakily backs up a late-model Chevy Suburban, unloads a cache of Costco goods — chicken breasts, lettuce, limes, packaged cold cuts — and carts them into the restaurant through a back door near our table.

Sliced ham, in fact, lines a crêpe "sandwich," as the menu puts it, along with lettuce, tomato, thickly sliced cucumber and several swipes of mayonnaise.

The crêpe, alas, isn't one of the wonderfully lacy specimens made with rice flour and ground turmeric that the Vietnamese call banh xeo. Instead, it's a standard French-style crêpe, as might be used for crêpes Suzette, and a bland, slightly soggy one at that.

The crêpes aren't a bad idea, but why not serve the Vietnamese versions, too?

Roll with it

What does succeed at Nam Van Noodle Café is the nam nuong summer roll (the menu says spring roll, but I'll use the more specific translation).

Familiar rice wrappers are stuffed not just with standard fillings like rice vermicelli, green onions and lettuce, but also with fingers of nam nuong (grilled Vietnamese sausage) and with a thin fried egg roll.

These summer rolls come two to an order, and they're big — as long as a hot dog with bun, and almost as thick. To dip these behemoths in peanut sauce, you need a good grip, not the usual arrangement of thumb and two fingers.

I'd enjoy some mint and basil in the mix, for a whoosh of freshness, but the rolls' crashing contrast of textures and flavors is the best thing I experience at Nam Van Noodle Café.

Now, if someone would only take that potential and apply it to the pho.

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