I don’t go to the Eden Center often, but when I do I go with Doug Herbert. Doug, our Senior Mississippi, Idaho, and South Texas Correspondent, lives nearby, and loves to try out-of-the-ordinary foods. Our latest target was Trường Tiền.
Trường Tiền is named after a 1,322-foot-long iron bridge spanning the Perfume River in Hue, and connecting the old and new sections of the city. Gustave Eiffel designed the bridge and his company completed construction in 1900. Since then, the bridge has undergone considerable changes. Today, colorful lights garland the bridge.
Trường Tiền the restaurant is located in the Eden center main building, at 6763 Wilson Boulevard in Falls Church. You enter under the clock tower and go until you find it. (A tour of the Eden Center is an experience in itself.) There it is, right in front of you.
Trường Tiền is immensely popular, as suggested by the outside seating, and usually there’s a line. Doug and I arrived before noon, ahead of the rush, snagged the last free table, and looked around.
We promptly received menus and large jars of tea, and proceeded to study the menu. Since neither Doug nor I understand Vietnamese and, as you will see, the menu descriptions are … laconic, our perusal involved a lot of staring and guessing. Doug had spent six hours on a recent trip to Houston studying the cuisine of Hue, which tilts much more toward small plates, vegetables, and starches than the southern Vietnamese cuisine that is common in the United States. Doug identified four dishes he thought would be good. We discussed them with our very helpful server, who refined a couple of the choices and said that we’d chosen well. Impressive, Doug.
As you would expect, Trường Tiền numbers the dishes on the menu, but as you wouldn’t expect, they re-start the numbering with each page instead of continuing the numbers through the menu: the first dish on the second page was numbered 1 rather than 15. The first two dishes (1 and 7) are from the first page, and the second two (6 and 15) from the second page.
First cam #1, Bánh bèo Tôm Thit ($9.95), which the menu described a “steamed rice dumpling with shrimp.”
That was not what I expected. If you look closely you can see the white dumpling at the bottom of each dish. The orange shreds or fuzz are the shrimp, dried, and the brown below them is a shrimp paste. I’m doing a lot of guessing here. The tiny brown pieces are fried shallots, and, yes, that’s a pork rind on top. A dish of a thin sweet-savory sauce with thin slices of hot peppers also arrived. Each dish was two bites, three if you’re delicate. The flavors were very interesting and, except for the pork rind, timid — until you added the sauce, which was quite tasty. The photo below shows some of the sauce that came with the dish, and that I used with the other dishes. The pepper slices had authority.
Next came #7, Bánh It Bánh bèo Ram ($6.50), which the menu described as “Hue fried and steamed cake.”
This was very similar to the first dish, except that the dish sat on a crunchy rather than a tapioca-like surface. It lacked the textural variety, and overall was less interesting than the first. I think I’d choose something else next time to get more of a change of pace.
#6 was Bánh Khoai Tôm Thịt Nước Leo ($13.95) , which the menu described as “pancakes with shrimp and meat broth.” The pancakes were folded into a taco and had an outer shell that looked similar to that used in wraps, but without that cardboard-ish quality, and then a lettuce wrapping.
Here’s a closeup that gives a better sense of the way the meat broth soaked into the pancake.
The pancakes themselves had a fine crust and a nice flavor with good depth. The filling was mainly sprouts, with the shrimp and pork largely AWOL, at least by American standards, but the pancakes themselves rescued the dish.
Our next course was #15. Gỏi Đu đủ Khô Bò ($15.95), which the menu described as “papaya salad with beef jerky.” The beef jerky was flavorless, and mainly added some very chewy texture.
As you can see, the salad came topped with peanuts, and it was accompanied by a couple of crackers that we broke over the salad.
The dish had a marked mixture of textures, ranging from the soft texture of the salad elements through the chewy beef jerky, to the varied crunches of the peanuts and crackers. The flavors were mild and complemented each other well, with the exception of the jerky. The papaya salad also comes with squid or shrimp, and I’d go with the squid.
A dessert was included in our meal, which I believe — and I’m guessing here — was a sticky rice or a rice dumpling wrapped in layers of banana leaf.
The filling was very sticky and took a deal of unwrapping.
Are those sesame seeds? Who knows? The dish had a pleasant flavor and was not overly-sweet, and I enjoyed it.
Hue was the royal capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945, and the cuisine is said to reflect the royal tastes. The meal reminded me on an article about the foods that the Saxe-Coburgs — the British royal family — don’t eat. The list includes rare meat, garlic, foie gras, oysters, and more of the things that make for delicious food. But then I like big, spicy flavors. I have no doubt that the food was beautifully prepared, and the crowds proved that it’s very popular. Tastes differ, and I presume there were subtleties of flavor that passed over my head. Those of you with more, shall we say subtle palates may love it. Give it a try, and let me know what I missed.
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