Orange County and Houston both have great Viet food. Orange County however is a lot more progressive...willing to push the envelope and have fresh takes on the traditional.
Not typically a restaurant dish but found it to be decent here. Can get it as pho or just with bread. http://www.phosaigonnoodlehouse.com/menu/beef-noodle-soup-ph-bo and for a different twist with bread and bun bo hue...https://yelp.to/AIAxkgudMbb
Haven’t seen one list of restaurants... where the suggestions,??? I don’t wanna walk into a restaurant and not like it or hear about a better one after I get home lol Help a brother out and name me 2-3 good spots in SW. . All I need is 1 and then I’ll work my way towards discovering new ones ps. H/town has top food scene in USA. They hate us cuz they anus
u need to venture out more; it's in solid fourth place behind these epic centers of VietNamese cuisine in America the Little Saigon neighborhood in the city of Westminster in the OC my favorite is Brodard’s in the neighboring city of Fountain Valley the VietNamese triangle in san Jose / Saratoga / Milpitas, in close proximity to the Silicon Valley my favorite is Di Lac the Asian Corridor in San Gabriel Valley my favorite Pho Anvi Portland, Or is 5th in my books
it depends on your perspective. here is my understanding all 3 regional VN cuisines, Northern/Central/Southern are offered in the OC. for the most part, according to a VN food critic from a Northern VN household, Mai Pham, Houston offers only the Northern VN cuisine; actually, more like a sinocized version, a fusion of Northern VN and Cantonese cuisine. its a Tex/Mex take on Southern Chinese / Northern VN cuisines.
Hope you understand that the majority of Vietnamese in the US fled from the south. Out of all the regions...northern food is the worst. Nothing about the Viet food scene in the US is heavily influenced by the north. It’s the other way around actually.
i do read history books, that , at one time, North Viet and South Viet were 2 separate and distinct sovereign nations. South Viet was a US allies and North Viet was under communist rule headed by a former CIA trained agent, Ho Chi Ming. North Viet won the civil war; many southerners fled to the US, most of them to the OC while the former premier of So Viet refused to settle in the US, the vice premier settled in the OC owning a fleet of liquor stores
Houston has some really good and authentic Chinese food. While Houston may be lagging in the amount of Chinese restaurants as NY or CA I would say you can still find food as good and as authentic as what you can get in those places.
You might want to send copies of your history book to the entire Gulf shrimping industry from Corpus to New Orleans, and possibly eastward. I'm sure they'd all get a kick out of it.
Uh...no. A fun place to go, though, is Villa General Belgrano, especially during Oktoberfest. That's the town where all of the German survivors off of the Graf Spee ended up settling, and I'm sure some of their friends from the old country joined them as soon as they could. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_General_Belgrano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_River_Plate
Houston have some of the best authentic chinese food in the south imo, along with a large Chinese population.....just ask some Chinese people you know...but yeah Bellaire is where it's at for me. Now, reading your post, still not sure what you mean by "real" chinese food. Asking for authentic Chinese food is really broad (it's like asking for European food instead of Italian or French). There are 8 major culinary cuisine in China (though I tend to find a couple like sichuan and hunan close and similar, zhejiang and jiangsu similar...think st louis and memphis bbq). Still, there are enough variations for 4 to 5 really distinct and individualized cuisines/styles. Would need to understand which cuisine of the restaurant you liked hailed from to see what differentiate it. Though most of restaurants I see tend to be Cantonese, Sichuan, or north china in Houston. Then there's the 9th cuisine which is the Chinese American. I find it largely a fusion derivative of Cantonese style but distinct enough to be its own cuisine. I thought Padma's show taste the nation on hulu did a good job of teaching me it's history.
