Cyclo Hits the Street

        Hanoi is a walking city I love.  Even when we were lost, we were never really lost.  Despite erratic street numbers and hidden back alley food stalls, we'd actually found the tiny storefront famous for its bahn cuon ---  meat and mushrooms wrapped in a slippery rice crepe and sprinkled with shallot crisps. I remember dipping the just-off-the griddle roll into a cup of nunc man, the salty fish sauce of Vietnam, feeling triumphant. In no time we'd gone bananas for this country's street food, the boisterous seafood soups of the marketplace, exquisitely fresh spring rolls hawked by itinerant sidewalk peddlers, the sweet caramelized barbecued pork bits served with rice noodles and incendiary green chilis in a side street stall.

         Even given the swift sproutings of Vietnamese canteens here, it's not easy to indulge these new cravings.  Our summer rolls too often taste like shredded cardboard. You have to ask for nunc nam.  True, not all Southeast Asia greenery grows here, but a few odd sprigs can't substitute for the customary bowl of leaves  ---mint, basil, shiso, cilantro --- that go into soup or get tucked into the myriad rolls.   

         That's why I'm pleased to discover Cyclo, a narrow storefront painted iceberg lettuce green with its namesake bicycle-rickshaw parked outside.  All it takes is two or three tastes to know this is not another slamdash Chinatown luncheonette.   The greaseless crackle of spring rolls.  The mysterious nuttiness of minced monkfish to scoop up on broken shards of sesame cracker.  The grilled sugar cane shrimp to wrap in soft rice paper with mint leaves and dab with peanut sauce. This is street food with style and finesse. A request for chilis brings a peppery hot paste that satisfies the need for high risk heat.  Bring pals and taste all eight appetizers. True the mushroom-filled ravioli pale next to the memory of Hanoi's definitive version but they'll do for now. And I love the tempura'd yam and eggplant to wrap in lettuce with chili lime sauce. I'm not sure why the spicy green papaya salad is flecked with beef jerky, but I'm not complaining.

        Pork or chicken comes grilled on angel hair noodles.  Shrimp and silken, almost melting tendrils of squid, are tossed with rice noodles in a fragrant satay broth.  When it comes to rare sirloin in slices with string beans and basil, New York trumps Hanoi's. We skip the banana smothered in coconut-tapioca pudding knowing  Veniero's with its mythic cheesecake waits one block south.

         True, Cyclo's menu is modestly curt, evolving slowly, growing cautiously. Ginger-roast duck with spicy ginger-lime sauce just went daily. After a relentless search, partner Steven Duong has found a New Orleans farmer growing la lot, a rice paddy leaf essential to tamarind crab soup. "I'm so thrilled I can get it here," he cries. "I was thinking I'd have to sneak it in and grow it myself."  He's already importing the unique charcoal-roasted coffee beans of Vietnam.  Duong was doing double duty at Le Colonial when he opened Cyclo with his chef-partner Hong Lieng who still races back and forth from Le Refuge uptown to his kitchen here.  The sconce shades are made from U.S. government maps of Vietnam, "used to strategize during the war," says Duong.  Soon he plans to tour the homeland he left at thirteen to collect recipes and study imperial cuisine.  Last week he had a longing for the tumeric-marinated fish of Hanoi's famous Cha Ca Vong Restaurant.    "Come home," said his mother on the phone in Michigan.  "I'll make it and give you the recipe.
   
203 First Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets.
 

         Annam is Brian Bui's trophy, signaling the success of Mekong in SoHo,  and it's even more ambitious and just as good. From Carmine Street nothing says Vietnam -- not the dark-wood-mullioned windows, not the velvet  curtain swags, or the bare red brick and potted greenery.  Inside there are vintage family photographs, a small Buddhist shrine just in front of the garden (closed now) and the fish tank. "Won't that big ugly monster fish eat the little goldfish?" I ask. 
"Of course," says the manager matter-of-factly.  "That's what the arujuana fish eats.  There were 50 of them two weeks ago. Now look, only 20."  

         In the Manhattan food chain, we get to feast on luscious grilled beef rolled tightly in shiso, tangy beef tartare, another version of ravioli (plumped with chicken shrimp,jicama and shitakes), and calamari stuffed and steamed.  Fine shrimp and chicken salads are quite similar though the first has the tang of green papaya and cabbage is the underpinning of the second. Meaty spring rolls are cleanly fried as is the whole shrimp in its crinkly nightgown with bits of pork and clear noodles.

         The waiter -- he must have ESP -- is lugging a second table over to contain the feast.  He counsels against the filet mignon, urging us to get lemongrass-marinated grilled beef on a skewer instead.  Moist and flavorful, the meat gets rolled in tortilla-like rice crepes with leaves of mint and cilantro.  Most everything  -- splendid beef on vermicelli, even my favorite crisp-stuffed omelette  -- is supposed to be wrapped in leafy green lettuce with various dipping sauces.  I haven't been so busy wrapping since last Christmas. 
 
         Natrang-born Bui abandoned corporate finance for restaurants.  "My parents screamed  but I always wanted to be like Rick in Casablanca."  The menu's French tics ---the au buerre and the odd baguette betray brother Sonny's stint at Tandinh in Paris.  Having fled Vietnam at eight, Brian Bui was astonished last year to find omelette and French bread even in remote villages of the Mekong Delta.  "The steamed tile fish of Hanoi. Oh my God," he says.  "And the greens, so amazing."  He plans to go back in April, determined to cover the country from north to south. Two of his American wait staff  have already done it.  Funny how some of our most passionate Vietnamese restaurateurs are discovering the food of Vietnam at exactly the same moment we are.

38-40 Carmine between Bleeker and Bedford.