Banh Mi QB

After a long gestation period, Kings Walk is becoming quite a food hall, with all kinds of unusual eateries from a Polish pyrogi place to Japanese ice cream through Korean, Taiwanese and churros. Indeed, this part of town has become Reading's AsiaStreet with nearly twenty Asian food places along its length.

Sometimes I wish I could marry Market House and Kings Walk but I suspect that would just be an East Reading version of Blue Collar Corner (not a bad thing at all..). Kings Walk is a rather sterile environment which seems to have been conceived as a sapling of the giant Oracle centre next door. But recently, it has approach nearly full occupancy (see our article below).

However, this does beg the question of how many Korean barbecues and bubble tea shops Reading needs when a decent coffee shop or a nice British restaurant can't make it (RIP Workhouse Coffee just round the corner).

In our global world it is great to have choice and variety, but in Reading why does most of it come straight out of Asia ? Kings Road is a veritable stroll through the subcontinent with restaurants from Mumbai, Chennai, Kerala and Sri Lanka, now crowned by the range of eastern caffs in Kings Walk. Concentration isn't a bad thing as Bick Lane or Chinatown in London will attest.

Which brings us to the fact that both the Vietnamese restaurants in Reading are within a few yards of each other in Kings Walk.

The Pho chain had done a decent hand of introducing the fresh vibrant food of Vietnam into the UK and I am a regular patron. It is a comfortable restaurant to eat on your own when shopping in town, and I have visited branches in other towns and they bring that great chain benefit - reliability. The staff are well trained, the food is consistent and very good and the prices are reasonable. What isn't there to like ? They also seem to do a roaring trade in deliveries.

I have a real, longtime love of Vietnamese food stretching back to my early visits to France in my early twenties (now a very long time ago). Travelling and living in Paris often found me on the metro to Tolbiac or Belleville for a Vietnamese lunch. Now, at this point I have to confes that I have unfortunately never visited Vietnam, so do not have any basis for my impression of their cuisine beyond the Viet restaurants of Paris, the cooking of Vietnamese friends, and my own (frequent) attempts at this delicious cuisine.

Arguably, Vietnamese is to France what Cantonese cooking is to the UK, a hybrid hangover of colonisation and migration.

If you're not familiar with Vietnamese food then think Thai with far more subtle spicing and lots and lots of fresh herbs and thinly sliced raw or pickled veggies.

Coriander, mint, chillies and fish sauce, diced carrots and cucumber with bean sprouts and then rice or noodle with duck or pork, lemon grass infused curries and those wonderful spring rolls do not even begin to describe a vast and varied cuisine that natively is also very strong on fish, although, apart from prawns, this does not seem to have carried over much to the Vietnamese restaurants of the banlieu or Kings' Walk... Expensive and difficult to source, fish is sadly fast disappearing from British menus.

The spring rolls (chia gio or cha nem) are twice fried, crunchy with either a prawn and chicken or a veggie filling. I am more used to minced pork which is not on offer here but are at Pho (sorry, I have to compare).

The paper wrapped summer rolls are totally different - fresh bean sprouts vermicelli, carrots, cucumber and either prawn or chicken in a soft rice paper wrapper served cold with the crowning glory of Vietnamese food, Num chac sauce.

This simple sauce is often just made of lime juice, fish sauce, finely chopped chillies and water. Garlic paste and soy are sometimes added as is black vinegar and, yet again, very finely diced carrots. I almost always have some in the fridge becaue to me it is what ketchup or mayonnaise is to others. A perfect pickup for a dull plate of leftovers, or a zIngy addition to a salad and a miracle when added to noodles and some fresh veg and herbs.

Again, having never visited Vietnam I hate to comment on authenticity, but I have never been to a restaurant that did not serve the spring and summer rolls, especially the fried spring rolls, without lettuce.

My perfect spring roll has a large crispy lettuce wrap, a spring of mint and coriander bedded inside, perhaps a cheeky chilli slice or two, all blanketing the lovely roll itself. Wrap and then dunk in the num chac. This, in my view is as close to culinary heaven as you can get. But at Banh Mi there is no lettuce (and Pho are parsimonious in this regard too). My naked rolls were something of a let down.

My king prawn bun (imperial Hue noodle soup) was pleasant but a tad disappointing, even after piling it the small plate of accompanying aromats plus the chilli and garlic pickles, it did not really hit the mark. Bun traditionally uses a lighter broth than the long simmered pho soup, and also thin, round noodles. I will revert to pho next time.

Pho is, as you may have gathered by now, the national dish of Vietname and is a better choice, made by simmering beef bones with star anise, coriander seeds, fennel seeds and some cinnamon (plus a few other ingredients that may be specific to each chef, or their grandmother). Pho should be slurpy and enriched by the marrow from the bone. In my previous visits, I did find the version here a bit thin and mahh..

The eponymous banh mi baguette was soft and closer to an English soft roll than a traditional French baguette, but this is a recipe that has travelled the world, which frankly baguettes have not. Yes you can find a fine example in Hanoi or Pondicherry or Cote d Ivoire, but non French regions just do not have the right equipment to steam and bake that lovely crispy stick that you find in a boulangery. (The measure of a good baguette in my view is something that becomes inedible six hours after cooking - Paul has recently opened its 'boulangerie' at the end of Board Street and I loathe their hard, chewy, poppy encrusted bread). So the Vietnamese dispora make do with whatever is suitable locally. But I am a bread snob and I found the lack of outer crunchines complementing the crunchy but slightly soft pickled carrots I had hoped for disappointing.

My wife had the sliced roast pork and pork pate - the QB special, but I think the chicken would have been a better bet. To my taste there wasn't enough dressing (normally mayonnaise and Maggi sauce, but there are many varieties), and the veggies needed some pickling. Nothing came together.

The bill of nearly £50 for two with no alcohol is quite steep for lunch. A few more flavours and dollops are called for to inject some more taste and umami to these dishes.

Like nearly all Vietnamese people I have met, the staff are ever helpful, engaging and happy. You can sit inside or ourside in the broad walkway. Thanks to the bright canopy the restaurant can get to be very warm in summer, but is bright and welcoming during the colder months. If you sit inside, you will have to put up with some of the worst muzak I have ever heard in my life. 70s standards twanged out on a classic guitar with a synth background, playing horribly loudly.

I really, really want to say that this is the best Vietnamese in town, and will always support the family business over the big chain, but Pho is cheaper, better and a far more pleasant environment in my view. That said, the next time I am in need of a hit of fresh, brothy, bready food, I will probably stroll straight by its welcoming windows and head for this family run restaurant.