Kim Anh

It's no secret that I love Vietnamese. My penchant was no more evident than the morning after returning from 9 days in Iberia, when I awoke at 5:00am jet lagged and with a serious craving for banh mi. Had The Challenge not still been in effect, I would have immediately driven to Dong Phuong and engorged on their bakery's first batch of the day. But alas, one must do his best to finish what he starts.

Instead, I decided to wait to eat until a more respectable hour (10:00am), which is coincidentally the opening time for Kim Anh's Noodle House on Jefferson Hwy. I still can't explain exactly why I went searching for banh mi at a restaurant with the words "noodle house" in the name, but it made perfect sense at the time. Of course there was no banh mi to be found on the menu, but worse things have happened in this world.

The menu at Kim Anh's is very short - consisting mostly of soups or bowls of either egg or vermicelli noodles with your choice of meats. I started with the standard order of springrolls with shrimp and roasted pork, which were smaller than their contemporaries around town. The peanut sauce was not very good - lacking the richness which comes from knowing that you are eating a sauce with 5,000 calories per tablespoon.

But springrolls are not the end all be all for evaluating a Vietnamese restaurant. Pho typically isn't either, and in Kim Anh's case I hope that remains true for when I return and try something else.

Don't get me wrong: the full-flavored broth is top-notch, and the price is a bargain at $8. But here's my beef: there is not enough (beef, that is). Kim Anh has three choices of pho - beef, chicken, and pork meatball - or a combination of all of the above, which is what I had. Those limited protein selections are probably sufficient for most people. But when I order pho, I am looking for those strange cuts of beef that I oh so love. So where's the rare brisket? The tripe? The tendon?

Perhaps this is a personal disappointment which can only come from someone who enjoys eating cow stomach. Either way, in the future I'll likely be going elsewhere for my pho cravings, even though I must say again that the broth at Kim Anh is delicious. On my next visit I'll have to try the bun with chargrilled pork - my other litmus test for a Vietnamese restaurant. Until then, I'll hold off on marking Kim Anh's scorecard.

Kim Anh's Noodle House - Mulligan.