when you want, where you want.
Bánh Anh Em Makes Food With Some Tooth
Photo: Hugo Yu
Taste, smell, and spice tend to absorb the lion’s share of a restaurant critic’s attention, not to mention his adjectives. Texture often pulls the short straw. Non-western cuisines have been quicker to appreciate its merits — QQ, the Taiwanese-derived term for springiness and bounce, highlights exactly this — and it’s time I stood up for the chew and the chaw.
Textureheads should make their way to Bánh Anh Em, an offshoot of the Upper West Side restaurant Bánh that doubles down on a finicky precision, making its phos from the noodle up. As a result, soft-opening lines were forming even before its official debut in April. They haven’t abated: At 12:35 on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I was 30-somethingth in line, according to the digital waiting list that’s a current necessity, and one of about a dozen and a half people milling around outside, where a neighbor at the Japanese-antiques store next door shooed us from her entrance. On a Friday, I arrived before seven o’clock and I was 47th.
Provided you can keep busy in the neighborhood for a few hours — Village East is showing Sinners in 70-mm. one avenue away — Bánh Anh Em is worth a wait. Inside the semi-finished brick-and-plaster dining room, a brisk, peppy chaos pervades, but at the burners, nothing will be rushed. “It’s going to take a while,” a server told me of an order of bánh cuốn hà nội, glutinous rice crêpes rolled around a funky, herb-flecked mixture of pork and mushrooms. “She’s a little behind.” Our server gave a half-nod to one of the cooks, a small woman in her mid-50s wearing a backward red baseball cap and ladling milky rice broth onto cellophane-thin sheets, chatting and chuckling in low staccato bursts of Vietnamese with the rest of the kitchen line. Beneath a warped grate, hot coals spat sparks like fireflies in anticipation of floppy flats of pork, and on adjacent burners, curls of flame cradled pancake-size cast-iron skillets in which fried eggs sizzled.
When the bánh cuốn hà nội arrived (after about ten minutes, so not too long), they were excellent, looking a bit like raw shellfish. If that doesn’t whet your appetite, you may want to tread lightly among the steaming bowls of golden anise-scented broth, in which bobble brisket and Vietnamese ham, congealed cakes of blood and gyroscopic rounds of pork knuckle. I’ve never had one soup with so many textures, a trampolinist’s array: the ham spongy, blood springy, brisket dissolving, knuckle stretchy. The noodles, slippery and in good company, defy even these descriptions; they reveal the inadequacy of al dente. The pho noodles are churned out daily by a giant Jetsons-looking conveyor-belt contraption, a Thế Chiều machine imported from Vietnam, that takes up most of the space behind the bar.
Bánh Anh Em is not always a seamless experience. One night, the restaurant ran out of pho; during another, the lone dessert, a salted-egg cake, was long gone when we wanted some. I was still satisfied with everything that I got. And as a value proposition — no item on the menu rises higher than $30; dinner for two never cost much more than $100 — I liked it only more. If restaurant critics often overlook texture, we’re even guiltier of overlooking cost. I’ve eaten more Dover sole and Faroe Islands salmon than I can keep track of, but I won’t soon forget the pleasure I got out of Bánh Anh Em’s sizzling turmeric fish, orange-stained nuggets of catfish, presented fried and ready to be refried at your table, on top of a frizzy pile of dill and scallions that perfume the air with onion as they wilt. I was reminded of Tracy Letts’s line from August: Osage County: “Bottom feeders, my favorite.”
If you don’t have hours to spare waiting to sit, there’s always the option of taking out many of the dishes, including some exemplary bánh mìs. Just after noon one recent Sunday, I punched in an order on the restaurant’s website around the time the line would have been amassing at its door. When I arrived 30 minutes later, two mayonnaise-soaked heroes were waiting for me. Bánh Anh Em makes them with a variety of fillings — I particularly liked the Heo Quay, with thick slabs of roasted pork belly, skin, and pickled mustard greens — but the classic endures for a reason. The pâté, terrazzo-speckled head cheese, and quickly sogging roll are all homemade, a torpedo of textural complexity, emphasis on torpedo. Clear the rest of the day. The lightest thing on any of the sandwiches are the strands of pork floss, the wispy, fish-sauce-and-sugar fairy dust that’s often compared to cotton candy. That undersells the wonder of it. It’s more like a dandelion made out of bacon.
Bánh Anh Em
Get Some Coffee
A lone employee pulls frothy Vietnamese iced coffees. Order one made with coconut cream to go.
Pick Your Seat
When you’re added to the waiting list, you’ll likely be given the option to sit in the dining room, the bar, or — my vote — whichever opens up first.
(Try to) Game the Line
Friday lunch is the time I would choose to show up in hopes of avoiding a long wait.
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