THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Boi

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Boi Restaurant Review:

Bôi, a small Vietnamese eatery whose name refers to the owners' grandmother, is a joint venture of the Tran family from Ho Chi Minh City and Bill Yosses, pastry chef at the estimable seafood restaurant Citarella on Sixth Avenue. Menu items are delightful, beginning with rolls, like cha gio---something of a national food of Vietnam---crispy pockets of rice paper stuffed with shrimp, crabmeat and pork with jicama and carrot-lime sauce. Noodle dishes were delicious: Mmien cua, made from bean threads, is highly spiced and mixed with crabmeat, straw mushrooms and aromatics. Excellent pan-fried filet of red snapper, called ca xa, with turmeric in a spicy lemongrass-tamarind sauce, had a quickly seared exterior and nice moist flakiness inside. Also very good were banh xeo, wonderful Saigon-style crêpes sandwiched with shrimp, meatballs, bean sprouts and lettuce in a chile-lime dipping sauce--you will probably fight with your friends over this item. Yosses' desserts follow the Asian style and they are very tasty, like the tamarind cake with red papaya and a jackfruit toffee pudding. End with luscious, sweet Vietnamese coffee.