Mai Vietnamese will satisfy

<p>Have you ever noticed how some food leaves you feeling heavy and dull, like you just swallowed a bucket of butter? A thick slab of roast beef with Yorkshire pudding can do that, as can a gazillion-calorie triple cheeseburger at a fast food chain.</p><p>That’s why Vietnamese cuisine — with its clean and fresh flavors, its raw and crunchy vegetable delicacy, and the way it leaves you feeling satisfied but not stuffed — is such a welcome contrast to the fat, salt, and sugar-laden food so prevalent in our modern diet.</p><p>In fact, after dining at Mai Vietnamese Cuisine in Cotati, you might leave with a spring in your step — not only because of the lightness of the food, but also because of the modest prices and the caring service. Caring in ways beyond just good service. When our server saw that our table was getting a little crowded with all the food we ordered, she came over and pushed another table against ours so we had plenty of elbow room.</p><p>At most restaurants, wait staff ask in a perfunctory way how customers like the food. But our server seemed genuinely interested in our reaction to the dishes and proud of the way the kitchen puts together and presents the fresh ingredients.</p><p>The dining room is painted a cheerful, light canary yellow, and a variety of Vietnamese stringed instruments are fixed to the walls. In case you wonder what their music sounds like, just listen to what’s coming from the sound system.</p><p>Not everything is perfect at Mai Vietnamese Cuisine, though. The bland “peanut-hoisin” sauce tasted neither of peanuts nor hoisin (a bean-based Chinese barbecue sauce). Any good Thai-style peanut sauce would be better.</p><p>And the place has no beer or wine to offer, although it is next door to Buffalo Billiards, where there’s plenty of beer on tap if you must have a cold one. Order a Thai Iced Tea ($2.50 ***) instead, and you won’t be disappointed. Mai’s version is made with black Thai tea and half-and-half instead of condensed milk, giving it a lively flavor.</p><p>Spring Rolls ($5.25 **) are plump, their rice paper wrappers stuffed with vermicelli rice noodles, mint, lettuce, cooked prawns and pork.</p><p>Refreshing spring rolls are one of the joys of Vietnamese cuisine, especially when they are made with ingredients cold from the fridge. These were room-temperature warm and came with the bland peanut-hoisin sauce.</p><p>Chinese Sausage Spring Rolls ($5.25 **) were similar to the plain rolls, but contained more julienned root vegetables (carrots and jicama) and a slice of sweet, salami-like Chinese sausage that seemed out of place with all the crunchy vegetables.</p><p>Once past the spring rolls, the kitchen hit its stride. The Vietnamese Sizzling Crepe ($7.95 ***) is an Asian version of a frittata. You choose two items from prawns, pork or chicken to add to the eggy batter, which also contains bean sprouts and green onions. This is poured into a hot skillet and cooked until it sets, then flipped and finished on the other side. It’s served with the celadon-green inner leaves of romaine lettuce, mint, carrots, daikon pickles and fish sauce. You carve a piece of the crepe and slip it into a lettuce leaf along with some of the vegetables, drizzle it all with fish sauce, and eat it like a wrap.</p><p>Everyone at the table agreed that the Lotus Root Salad ($7.95 *** ½) was one of the highlights of the evening. A large mound of cold, clean-tasting, shredded fresh lotus root mixed with carrots, onions, pork and mint leaves is surrounded by a circle of cooked prawns sliced in half.</p><p>Low-fat fish sauce is served on the side. The menu offers a dozen “Stir-Fried Rice Plates.” If you read the fine print under this title, though, you discover that the dinner is served with steamed rice. The stir-frying of the title refers to the way the meat is cooked.</p><p>The Cubed Filet Mignon ($12.50 ** ½), sauteed with garlic, onions, and oyster sauce, sounded good, but the beef cubes were chewy, more like a sirloin or tri-tip, rather than tender like filet mignon. The rice was a scoop of sticky, fragrant jasmine rice that nicely soaked up the rich brown sauce. And the plate came with lettuce and sliced tomatoes. (“Don’t worry,” our server said in reference to the recent tomato-salmonella scare, “these are grown locally.”)</p><p>Of the three curries on the menu — scallop, chicken, or prawn — the Chicken Curry ($7.50 ** ½) was the least expensive. Still, the portion was generous. The curry comes in a bowl with a soupy mix of curry powder, coconut milk, lemongrass, carrots, potatoes and onions. A mound of white rice is on the side. Here’s a plate of flavorful sustenance that will fill a hungry belly for a modest amount of money. College kids at SSU take note.</p><p>Chow mein comes with either soft slender noodles — as it does in China — or thin crispy noodles, as in westernized Chinese restaurants. And it can be ordered with chow fun — wide, soft rice noodles that originated in China but now are enjoyed across Southeast Asia, including Vietnam. Prawn Chow Mein ($7.95 ** ½) is a mixture of prawns, carrots, celery, cabbage, broccoli and oyster sauce over a bed of crispy wheat noodles. It’s texturally interesting as well as delicious.</p><p>Bun is the Vietnamese dish of grilled meat or seafood mixed with fresh vegetables topped with crushed peanuts and set over hot rice noodles. An order of Vermicelli Chicken (Bun Ga Nuong) ($7.50 ***) was a big bowl of food. The chicken breast meat had been sliced thinly, then pounded even thinner before spending just a few moments on the hot grill. The vegetables included lettuce, radishes, carrots, cilantro, and spring onions. As with the chicken curry, and many other dishes on this menu, you can eat your fill of fresh, nutritious food for well under $10.</p><p>A long list of nine desserts stumped us, so we asked the server, “Which dessert do people like in Vietnam?” She pointed us toward the Cassava Cake ($3 ***), and it’s obvious from the first taste why the Vietnamese prefer it. The cake is served hot, wet and slightly sweet. It contains ground starchy cassava and shredded coconut and is a delightful way to finish the meal.</p><p>To sum up: Scads of great choices on the menu, great big portions on the plates, fresh-tasting and nutritious ingredients, friendly service, and all for just a few dollars. Ya gotta love it.</p><p>Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for A&E. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.</p>