Review of Mui Ngo Gai Vietnamese restaurant, Vancouver
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Review of Mui Ngo Gai Vietnamese restaurant, Vancouver
April 4, 2013. 8:22 am • Section: Word of Mouth
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VANCOUVER,
BC_MARCH 28_2013: The Vietnamese Restaurant called Mui Ngo Gai is run
by Chef Le Doan (left) and her uncle Nghi Do. Nghi holds the Vietnamese
pancake called Banh Xeo and Chef Le holds the lemongrass chicken dish.
(Photo by Kim Stallknecht/PNG) (For Mia Stainsby Story)
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Nghi Do, who runs Mui Ngo Gai restaurant, escaped his homeland amid an all-too-common nightmare after the fall of Saigon — 300 people crammed on a boat, two days out, there’s no more food or water. There’s a death on board, sanitation conditions are unimaginably filthy and they sail for five more days without food or water.
Do, who had studied psychology in Vietnam, arrived in Canada as a refugee in 1980 and remembers one of his first days in Vancouver. The refugees were housed in a hotel. He wanted to see the city. He copied the name of the hotel on his hand and went for a walk. Upon retracing his steps, he realized he was lost. He showed the name of the hotel to a lot of people but they couldn’t help him. He had written “Vacancy.”
A cab driver drove him to the police station and all the while, he was panicking as he had no means to pay the cabbie. Whoever that cabbie was, this city thanks you: Instead of asking for fare, he handed Do twenty dollars and said ‘Good luck’. I just love that story.
Once Do had studied psychology in Saigon. In Vancouver, he worked in a factory making souvenir totem poles then went to B.C.I.T. to study electronics. Somehow, he says, he ended up consulting and managing Vietnamese restaurants.
Mui Ngo Gai, Do says, is a restaurant for Canadians. “It’s normal, typical Vietnamese foods. I want to introduce Vietnamese food, the kind we ate at home every day,” he says. The name translates to culantro, a cousin to cilantro, with longer and serrated edges.
The restaurant started off on Nanaimo St. but moved to Kingsway’s ‘Little Saigon’ neighbourhood three years ago; the neighbourhood is chock a block with Vietnamese businesses. His niece Le Daon is the chef and a friendly presence in the restaurant. She guards the secrets of the dishes but not so, her uncle who will proudly talk about how they’re made. The great photographs of Vietnam on the walls are Eon’s. Do is at the restaurant during the lunch and dinner rushes and regulars tell him the place is like home. That would be thanks to his welcoming presence.
This family’s enthusiasm to please can be seen and tasted in the food. The menu sprawls with over a hundred items but a good 15 of them are variations of pho, the Vietnamese soul food. What I tried, I liked. Great broth, rare beef, just enough noodles. A lot of dishes are less than $10.
Chicken wings ($3.50 for five pieces) are cleanly cooked without a greasy residue. Steamed pork and shrimp dumplings, wrapped in banana leaf ($7 for 10 pieces) are delicate and translucent. I’ve had a lot of green papaya salads in Thailand recently and have high expectations. I wasn’t disappointed here. It’s Do’s recipe and he says it’s a delicate balance to get the dressing just right.
I’m also a fan of Vietnamese grilled meats. One dish combined grilled pork on skewers with shrimp on sugar cane and bundles of fine rice noodle ($11.45).
There’s a large selection of ‘specialty soups’, each with difference soup bases for $6.75 and $7.50. The rice noodles with beef satay, peanuts, lemon grass, ground dried shrimp, and bean sprouts, topped with greens is deliciously rich.
I love Vietnamese crepes and here, it’s a crispy sunburst of turmeric, rice flour and coconut milk, flecked with pork and shrimp. Fresh basil, cilantro, and a daikon and carrot salad add contrast and you can add them to bean sprouts inside the fold. Loved it.
Pork spareribs, under the category “Southern style salty caramelized meats” ($12.95) came in a metal wok. It was tender and ‘caramelly’.
And what does Do like on the menu? “I always like chicken,” he says. And his favourite is lemongrass chicken with chili that comes sizzling on a hot iron plate. “It’s very hot. When it comes from the kitchen to the table, it goes, ‘shhhhhhhh’,” he says.
He also recommends the Mekong Delta soup. It has a strong soup base and he was surprised at how well his customers like it. It’s got basa, prawns, squid, pork, eggplant, chives, fish paste and noodles. And for $8, it’s a deal of a meal.
There’s a lot of competing Vietnamese restaurants in Vancouver’s Little Saigon. Mui Ngo Gai is definitely one of the better ones.
Mui Ngo Gai, 2052 Kingsway (at Victoria). 604-876-8885. http://www.muingogai.ca. Open 7 days a week, 11 to midnight.
Restaurants visits are conducted anonymously and interviews done by phone.
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