Teu Quan

Amid the dime-a-dozen stalls gracing Food Street, Teu Quan steps forward with a style and flavour all its own. Within hours of opening its doors, the restaurant had already won over Jacob O Gold.

For several weeks before it actually opened, the proprietors of Teu Quan were happy enough to welcome all comers into their prenatal premises, treating the errant visitor to bottomless, complementary cups of ruou lang Van – some kind of wonderful country rice moonshine – without so much as asking what they’d like from the as-yet uncompiled menu. These days, Teu Quan is applying the same effortless generosity to the serious business of feeding its guests.

Tong Duy Tan is a street renowned for its all-hours dives, the greasiest of Hoan Kiem’s greasy spoons. My xao? Pho xao? Lau? At a certain point in the night, most of the joints on this street defer their culinary efforts to what Clarence Vrye called, "the sauce that supercedes all others". Not so Teu Quan. Alone among a heap of storefront stalls otherwise happy to toe the sleepy slime-noodle line, this new arrival to 5 Tong Duy Tan Street comes out swinging with a startlingly original and well-honed menu, deliciously realised. And the ruou lang Van is as free-flowing as before.

These were the dishes sampled and thoroughly enjoyed by your intrepid correspondent: nem ca (fried spring rolls filled with fish and noodles); so diep nuong mo hanh (described on the menu as "grilled arca positive fat onion" – actually a great-tasting sea clam); da dieu nuong ong tre (ostrich cooked in a bamboo tandoori tube); ca sau xao lan (stir-fried crocodile). The Vietnamese names for these dishes are provided here becaTeu Quan is so newly, beamingly open that it took them about half an hour before they realised the words that had come out of my mouth were names of foods I wanted them to make for me.

But even if you fail to bridge the language barrier as clearly as you’d like, worry not. It’s like Chauncey Gardner from Jerszy Kosinski’s Being There owning a Vietnamese restaurant: everything you order comes out just right. And Teu Quan is not just some sort of downtown repository of exotica – their good ol’ fashioned Tong Duy Tan cuisine is a taste for sore tongues inured to the bleary oil-soaked ordinaire of Food Street.

Like many other Ha Noi establishments, Teu Quan occupies several compact floors. The length of the first sports a series of woven-bamboo tables and chairs, dyed a deep chocolate brown, with photographs of the little northern village of Van (if only the United States could make such fine hooch north of Dixie) and various clay jugs of, what else, studding the walls. Upstairs, across from the kitchen, is a long room similar to drinking chambers found in Japan or Korea, wherein at the time of your correspondent’s visit to Teu Quan a host of dudes were wolfing down lau, hoisting their sails to the wind, and belting out mournful ballads like their lives depended on it.

For what it is – a clean, smartly decorated sit-down establishment with knockout food – Teu Quan is a very reasonably priced place.

Teu Quan’s staff are exceedingly kind and helpful. The guys wear some truly cool T-shirts and the dolls are decked out in bright-red mandarin robe gear. The manager of the restaurant is named Hoang, a native of HCM City who’s been running restaurants in Ha Noi for the last three years. Teu Quan is one of three Ha Noi restaurants owned by the same Faulknerian mama-san, whose flinty fist seems to be nestled inside a delectably-spiced glove.

Teu Quan

Address: 5 Tong Duy Tan St, Ha Noi

Tel: 090 631 5551

Hours: 9am-late

Comment: Countryside classics, city sophistication

Source VietNamNews