This city has the third-highest Vietnamese population in America, which makes sense if you think about it. Vietnamese are reminded of home in Houston, where they can get the same skin-sucking humidity, horrific traffic and lousy college basketball.
What Houston gets out of it is some of the best Vietnamese food in North America. Vietnamese food is like Chinese food with a conscience. It’s healthy. Lean meats. Fresh vegetables. Light sauces.
I visited Vietnam five years ago, taking a slow boat from Ho Chi Minh City into Cambodia. Everywhere I went, I marveled at the variety, quality and tastes of dishes I never heard of, let alone could pronounce.
I also noticed how healthy the Vietnamese looked. Those who weren’t affected by Agent Orange, which has been passed from generation to generation, seemed vibrant and strong.
An estimated 30,000 Vietnamese live in Houston today with the first migration coming in the mid-’70s after South Vietnam fell. Vietnamese fishermen and shrimpers could get similar work around Houston, only 35 minutes from the Gulf Coast.
The second migration came in the past 10 years when wealthy Vietnamese in San Jose and Orange County, one and two on Vietnam’s immigration list, arrived for cheaper real estate. The Los Angeles Times reported one Vietnamese businessman selling his $1 million home in California and buying seven houses in Houston for $170,000-$200,000.
What follows every ethnic migration is the emergence of ethnic restaurants. That may be another reason Vietnamese settled here. Houston is a pretty sophisticated city.
I can’t picture Bubba in Beaumont gathering up the family and heading out for some tay cam. At least people in Houston will try it.
Take banh mi. That’s a Vietnamese sandwich that has become all the rage in Houston. Banh mi shops have popped up around Houston like Subway.
The best banh mi shop in town is Les Givral’s. Right in the heart of downtown, Les Givral’s is named after the cafe in Saigon’s old Continental Hotel where the banh mi was believed to be born.
I stood at the counter and checked out a collection of awards that covered almost an entire wall: Best Restaurant. Best Vietnamese Restaurant. Best Late Night Dining. Best Street Sense.
The star at Les Givral’s is the banh mi. What separates Vietnamese cuisine from other Asian foods is the heavy French influence. You see, colonization isn’t always a bad thing. As colonists, the French were swine but they were pretty good cooks.
You can tell the French influence just looking at a banh mi. It’s in a French roll, warmed just enough to envelop the fresh vegetables and meats stuffed inside.
I ordered the thit nuong, chargrilled barbecue pork covered in carrot shavings, cucumbers and parsley. The pork didn’t have that crunchy, oily texture of Chinese stir-fry. It was lean, tasty and tangy.
It beat Subway and not just because it cost only $2.75.
“If people are wary, I’ll say, ‘There’s no dog on the menu. Don’t worry,’ ” said Linh Ly, who owns Les Givral’s with her brother and his wife.
Ly has the perfect restaurateur combination of Vietnamese charm with an American edge. (Talk on your cell phone when you order? End of the line, pal.) Her family moved here in 1975 after the American War, as the Vietnamese call it, and she’s a born and bred Texan.
They opened Les Givral’s in 2004.
“We’re the new generation,” Ly said without a trace of an accent, Vietnamese or Texan. “We took the name and gave it a new twist and modernized it.”
I asked her for the best Vietnamese restaurant in Old Saigon, Houston’s Vietnamese neighborhood in Chinatown. Her father recommended Taydo, which, I figured, like most Chinatowns, would be hidden in an enclave somewhere downtown.
I gave the cab driver the address and he drove. And drove. And drove. After 45 minutes I started thinking we’d pass rice paddies and old men in conical hats.
We wound up passing an endless number of characterless strip malls and fast-food Mexican joints with unfortunate names. (I’ll pass on Freebird’s World Burrito, thank you.)
We finally reached a modern restaurant with a huge banquet hall adorned with dragons and firebirds. Pho is a Vietnamese diet staple. It’s a huge bowl of boiling soup with long noodles, vegetables and meat.
It’s healthy but I remember nearly passing out eating pho in the humidity of Vietnam which could serve as an incubator for African violets.
Instead I ordered the bo luc lac, thin beef chunk steak strips sprinkled with peanuts and cucumbers atop thin white vermicelli rice noodles. Doused with a light fish sauce, it was the perfect healthy, balanced meal.
Thankfully, not everything is bigger in Texas.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
If you go
Les Givral’s, 801 Congress St., Houston, 713-547-0444
Taydo, 2529 Hwy. 6 South, Houston, 281-584-0097.
