Mai House Flavors Your Night
Spicing Up TriBeCa
by John Mariani

Located in a historic warehouse in TriBeCa

The ever inventive Myriad Restaurant Group, under Drew Nieporent and Michael Bonadies, which owns or manages such disparate restaurants as Montrachet (French), TriBeCa Grill (American-Mediterranean), Nobu (Japanese), Nobu Fifty Seven, and Centrico (Mexican) in NYC, Nobu London, The Coach House on Martha's Vineyard, and the new Proof on Main in Louisville, has taken a particularly curious diversion into Vietnamese cooking with Mai House, right around the corner from other TriBeCa restaurants.

Mai House is one of their more casual efforts, set within a former warehouse that once housed Myriad's bakery, now an L-shaped, shadowy layout with 120 seats, hard-carved fixtures from Vietnam, walls textured with crushed sunflower seeds, banquettes with a zebra-patterned fabric, a butcher block made from mother-of-pearl and bamboo, and hanging lights in the shape of lotus flowers. It can get loud in there as the night progresses, and the bar is long and very convivial—a good place to try some of the tasty cocktail concoctions like the Saigon Sling and Delta Dream.

Shrimp Rolls

The chef onboard is Saigon-born Michael Huynh, formerly at the estimable Bao 111 and now a partner at Mai House, and he is doing his own imaginative cuisine within the traditions of Vietnamese food culture wedded to modern ideas of presentation with a fairly large menu. Having spent my twenties trying to avoid going to Vietnam, I claim no familiarity with restaurants in Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, so I cannot speak about authenticity, although Vietnamese cuisine is very much an amalgam of Southeast Asian and French influences (from its days when it was called Indochina). Huynh seems to be taking the sensible tack with easy-to-love appetizers that include cool shrimp rolls with vermicelli and a hazelnut bean sauce. Hot spring rolls contain pork, crab and shrimp and take the ubiquitous nuoc cham sauce as a dressing. Manila clams are cooked in a spicy broth of beer, while fried frogs' legs come as "lollipops," with a dipping sauce of hot jalapeño aïoli, which these bland critters need.

Almost everything has a tantalizing little surprise in the preparation. So lamb is given the tingle of lemongrass, put on skewers, quickly seared, then served with pickled vegetables and a light anchovy sauce. Barbecued quail, nice and fat, are sided with pickled lemongrass with sticky rice and crispy shallots and there is even a wild boar sausage with a green papaya salad. You scoop this food up, pop it in your mouth, lick it off your fingers, and, reluctantly, share it with your friends. (Portions are not huge, however, so you might have a fight on your hands).

Among the entrées are spicy beef cheek from wagyu beef, with lotus root and curried cauliflower purée. Tender pork belly is braised with pickled red cabbage and coconut juice and it's wonderful how zesty these flavors are far more interesting than so many European preparations of the same ingredient's. The claypot chicken with quail eggs and spices definitely begs to be shared.

I found the seafood somewhat less savory, like the cloyingly sweet-and-sour whole red snapper with tomatoes and Chinese celery that tasted too close to Chinese take-out. Other seafood items were fairly bland, including Dungeness crab with garlic and chives, although that's a dish where you want the delicacy of the crab to be eminent. Noodles are wonderful—try the crab fried rice with egg and Chinese sausage or the duck fried rice with smoked duck, duck confit and duck egg.

Don't forget the very savory side dishes, including sticky rice with Chinese sausage and wonderful, refreshing steamed mustard greens that help cut the spices in the other food.

The winelist more than complements the difficult seasonings here, with plenty of aromatic whites and spicy reds, and many under $50 a bottle.

Of desserts I cannot rave, but stick with the sorbets and you'll have a fine ending to an exotic and deliciously different meal.

I have read some ill-informed reviews or comments in the blogs about the prices being high at Mai House when you can eat some of the same dishes for five bucks in a Chinatown eatery. Believe me, however enjoyable it is occasionally to nosh in some storefront Vietnamese restaurants with tacky décor and few amenities, there is no way their owners can buy the best ingredients and charge $5 for a dish. Mai House's ingredients are top notch and it shows in the texture and taste of dishes that elsewhere taste frozen or left over from the previous day. Cheap does not equate with good, and besides, with appetizers at Mai House, $9-$13 and entrées, $18-$28, you are getting plenty of value for your money and a helluva lot more atmosphere and service, not to mention good English.

John Mariani is well known for his frank and poignant writing in Esquire, Wine Spectator, Diversion and the Harper Collection. He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink and co-author, with his wife, of the Italian-American Cookbook.