b Happy Sumo Food Journal

Friday, August 04, 2006

New Saigon Restaurant, Denver

We had good food and boba drinks at New Saigon restaurant recent, on South Federal Boulevard in the Vietnamese area of town. New Saigon has been around since at least the 80’s, so they must be cooking it up right. Location: 630 Federal Boulevard. Me, Eric, Thoy and Mitch started out with Vietnamese Eggrolls. Usually I eat the pork version but Thoy wanted shrimp, and they are remarkably similar. Grab a piece of eggroll, put it on a lettuce leaf, add bean sprouts, carrot, cucumber, mint leaves and cilantro, and roll it up into a kind of "Vietnamese Burrito." Dunk it in the fish sauce and enjoy.

I had the Combination Noodle Bowl, which has a lot of the same elements as the eggroll dish: A bowl of rice noodles with carrot, cucumber, bean sprouts, cilantro and mint leaves, that is topped with perfectly grilled marinated chicken, beef and shrimp, then ground peanutes. Served with fish sauce. It was really good, a lot of food. Order it if you are really hungry. It's a total explosion of a lot of different flavors in your mouth.

Mitch had a bowl of the Vietnamese soup. It looked really good, but I didn't get a review from him so I have to go by what I saw. A huge bowl of broth chock full of noodles and vegetables; there was a piece of fried yam sticking up from the side, that's what you see in the image.

Here's Eric's review of his dish and an image: "I don't remember the name of the dish but it was deep-fried scallops with peppers and onions. It was pretty good, nice and tasty, good sized portion. The worst part was that I took half of it in a doggie bag, but in my rush to go home on Friday I left it at work. I was really looking forward to eating it again for dinner."

Here's Thoy's review of her dish and an image: "Some Seafood Dish - Scallops, Shrimp and Lobster sautéed with mix vegetables - presents well, but a okay dish. More like a Chinese dish than Vietnamese. Would probably be a great dish for someone whose not Asian. I may have liked it better if I had ordered it spicy... I love spicy Asian dishes."

After lunch we ordered boba drinks to go - I had the passionfruit with coconut jellies, Mitch had coconut pineapple, Eric had something else fruity, and Thoy had her signature smelly Durian fruit, which I tried again. Makes the car smell like gasoline. The first time I tried it I can only say "Onion Smoothy." I tried it again, because I understand that it must be an acquired taste, and it was a little better, but still an acquired taste.

Overall rating - 4 sumos

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