When I first walked in, I felt like Mai Lan Restaurant was expecting me. The small building that houses the restaurant sits on North State Street, waiting for diners to walk in.

Mai Lan Restaurant is a little dining room with posters depicting Vietnamese culture plastered around the walls. The only window, and its natural lighting, was located at the front of the restaurant. I like being able to see customers from the outside of the restaurant, but this restaurant covered its huge window with heavy curtains, sealing off the diners from the outside view, and vice versa.

I started my meal with a light appetizer, the Saigon Pancake, for $7. I’ve always enjoyed Asian versions of savory crepes. It is a savory rice flour crepe that lays over a generous pile of shrimp and vegetables. A light drizzle of thin sweet garlic chili sauce over the crepe added a sweet and salty touch to the mildly flavored crepe. It was absolutely delicious.

For the main course, I was in the mood for a bowl of pho. I ordered the Rice Noodle Soup Special, which cost $7. The thought of sipping on savory, steaming beef flavored broth provided comfort from the chilly weather.

The wait wasn’t long. When the server brought out the soup, I saw the pile of rice noodles submerged beneath the generous broth. Paper-thin slices of beef and beef meatballs floated in the hot liquid and a refreshing garnish of raw bean sprouts and Thai basil sat right over the pile of rice noodles.

Pho is typically served with specific utensils in order to help people eat it in a particular fashion. The broth is the focal point of pho — it isn’t just there to keep your noodles warm. You slurp the broth like you’re drinking savory tea, which is why the restaurant’s white spoon was huge and formed in a way that will hold a lot of broth.

On the side, the server brought out the iconic bottle of Sriracha chili sauce, its intense bright red color sharply contrasting the bright green top.

However, she didn’t bring a plate of garnishes, which is normally a generous pile of bean sprouts, Thai basil, chili peppers and wedges of key lime. Usually, the fashion of serving these fresh condiments is to continuously enjoy the different garnishes with each bite of pho.

The art of making pho noodle soup is in the way the cook prepares the broth. The broth is usually prepared through many phases and overnight simmering. The unique broth flavors of different households or restaurants are heavily varied because of the vegetables and spices the cooks choose to add in.

The broth at Mai Lan Restaurant was too sweet for my taste. The cook must have either added too much sugar, or didn’t simmer and reduce it long enough for the gentle salty flavors to fuse through the broth.

In proper pho fashion, I used my chopsticks to assemble a mini coil of rice noodles in my soup spoon. Then I took a piece of beef and placed it on top of my mini coil of noodles. I gently dunked my soupspoon under the sweet broth so it filled up all the gaps of the spoon.

Each bite featured different elements: for some, I fixed a basil leaf on top. Others were just the rice noodles and broth, and some bites were just simply the broth, when I needed more sipping comfort between each solid bite.

Don’t let Mai Lan Restaurant’s curtained-sealed windows scare you away; inside is a warm welcome — literally.

Published on April 28, 2014 at 1:00 am

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