an Oakland restaurant to check out - Champa Garden
Came across a review on SFGate of a restaurant that sounds worth checking out, especially since it's not far from where Pirate & I live: Bargain Bite: Champa Garden. From the review:Even familiar dishes sing their own song here, and quite a few depart from the cookie-cutter Thai-Vietnamese menus of the Bay Area.
The fried rice ball salad (nam keow) ($5.95) is a good example. A softball of rice stuffed with ham-like preserved pork is deep-fried, then torn up and doused with lime. You wrap pieces, and herbs, in lettuce leaves. The chicken salad ($5.95), a Vietnamese menu standby, is bold and hot, loaded with dark meat, ripped basil leaves, red peppers and thin-sliced onion.
Lao's noodle soup ($4.95 medium/$5.95 large), mild and brothy, fills you up with pencil-thick house-made rice noodles, prawns, fish balls and cuttlefish. The Lue version has the same noodles but a spicy, beefy soup. The red curry with tofu and vegetables ($6.95) is rich with coconut milk but avoids the over-sweetening typical of Americanized Thai food. Portions are generous. And Singha beer is $2 for a 12-ounce bottle.
Yum!
[ETA: more links:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2006-06-28/dining/food.html
http://www.yelp.com/biz/Jlt5w5ItA8ugiXif2VVQ5g
The fried rice ball salad (nam keow) ($5.95) is a good example. A softball of rice stuffed with ham-like preserved pork is deep-fried, then torn up and doused with lime. You wrap pieces, and herbs, in lettuce leaves. The chicken salad ($5.95), a Vietnamese menu standby, is bold and hot, loaded with dark meat, ripped basil leaves, red peppers and thin-sliced onion.
Lao's noodle soup ($4.95 medium/$5.95 large), mild and brothy, fills you up with pencil-thick house-made rice noodles, prawns, fish balls and cuttlefish. The Lue version has the same noodles but a spicy, beefy soup. The red curry with tofu and vegetables ($6.95) is rich with coconut milk but avoids the over-sweetening typical of Americanized Thai food. Portions are generous. And Singha beer is $2 for a 12-ounce bottle.
Yum!
[ETA: more links:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2006-06-28/dining/food.html
http://www.yelp.com/biz/Jlt5w5ItA8ugiXif2VVQ5g