For people strapped for cash, Noodle Palace on Petaluma Hill Road in Santa Rosa is an oasis, a godsend and a lucky break. It's easy to fill your belly with a small bowl of Seafood Noodle Soup ($5.50, 2 stars). That's the small bowl and it's immense. The large, for $6.95, will give you plenty to take home after you've had your fill, and the extra-large at $8.30 will feed your entire family, including the pets, with maybe some left over for the neighbors.
The soup consists of a hearty clear broth loaded with, as the menu says, "rice noodles, crab, shrimp, fish balls, squid, and chicken." No matter that the crab is actually pollock dyed red on one side to look like crab - the faux crab you see in supermarkets - it's still life-sustaining protein from the sea.
The broth is delicious and warming. The proprietors have had plenty of practice making it, as they are also affiliated with the popular Pho Vietnam at Stony Point Plaza shopping center, "pho" being the Vietnamese word for soup.
Oh, and the seafood noodle soup is the most expensive of the kinds available. Beef rice noodle soup and chicken noodle soups are $5.50 each for small, just $6.50 for large and $7.45 for extra-large. These categories contain a large array of soups. There are 11 kinds of beef rice noodle soups with combinations of flank steak, brisket, tendon, tripe, beef meatballs, rare steak, fat and more.
Beef Special Combo Soup ($5.50, 2 stars) contained sliced beef and beef meatballs, green onion and rice noodles in a pleasant broth. The Chicken Noodle Soup ($5.50, 2 stars) had a clear chicken broth, cilantro, rice noodles and slices of chicken breast. When you order soup, the server brings a plate with basil, bean sprouts and sliced jalapeno to add as condiments as you wish.
You understand this isn't gourmet cooking. The meat portion of Bun Bo Hue ($5.50, 1? stars), which translates to "noodle and beef Hue style," was a thin slice of beef leg bone with nutritious marrow fat in its center, surrounded by a fringe of tough beef and cartilage swimming in an oily red broth with a large clump of rice noodles. It isn't filet mignon, but it tastes good, it's nutritious, and it will keep you going for a five spot and change. Not bad at today's rates.
Neither is the fare at Noodle Palace exclusively Vietnamese. It's more a mixture of dishes from Southeast Asia, especially Thailand. Here's pad Thai, and its culinary relative Pad Kee Moo ($8.95, 2 stars), a big plate of wide egg noodles with strips of tough, chewy beef drenched in a very spicy sauce.
Southern China figures in the mix as well, with the presence of seafood, chicken, pork, and beef chow fun on the menu, along with saut?d seafood crispy noodles. For something that more closely resembles a Western dinner, look over the 12 rice plates available with barbecued beef, pork or chicken with either shrimp or egg rolls, all of which are priced from $6.95 to $7.50. If thin, vermicelli-style noodles are more to your taste, the restaurant offers nine dinner plates with thin rice noodles, again with beef, pork or chicken accompanied by prawns or egg rolls, in the $6.95 to $7.45 range.
While there were many exotic dishes I'd never heard of listed on the whiteboard by the kitchen, I couldn't pass up Chicken on a Stick ($4.95, 3 stars), or as they are usually called, chicken satay. You get three skewers, but they are loaded with tender, juicy chicken thigh meat chunks dipped in sweet sauce and grilled, rather than the thin ribbons of white meat served as satay in many Asian restaurants.
One of the exotic specials on the whiteboard was Kow Piek ($6.50, 2? stars), a Laotian dish that translates as "wet rice." It can be made with rice or noodles. Here it was soft noodles and lots of them in a big bowl of yummy (if salty) pork broth. Big dark brown chunks of pork liver were mixed into the broth and noodles. The broth and noodles are the foundation; you add condiments as you wish. Besides basil, bean sprouts or jalapeno, each table also has a condiment tray of soy and fish sauces, Sriracha spicy red sauce, hoisin barbecue sauce, sugar, salt, pepper, and a squeeze bottle of fiery red sauce with no label.
The most expensive dish of the evening was Lard Nah ($10.95, 2 stars), a Thai-Cambodian wide, pan-fried, rice noodle dish, often made with beef or chicken, but made here with seafood and sliced vegetables served cold. It contained balls made of mashed fish along with shrimp, squid and fish slices.
Noodle Palace has just received its license to serve beer, but it's hard to beat the fresh lemonade made with club soda that seems to go so well with Southeast Asian food.
The service is quick and food is served with a smile, but speak clearly when ordering, as English is generally not the servers' first language. That, of course, only adds to the ambiance and insures that the dishes are authentic - although I'd venture a guess that in Southeast Asia, these dishes would be spicy hot. But that's why the fiery squeeze bottle is handy.
To sum up: Lots of good Asian food at more than reasonable prices.
Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for the Sonoma Living section. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.
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