Vietnamese chicken wings, sizzling steaks and bánh cuốn on the ultimate Westminster and Garden Grove food crawl
The shopping centers of Westminster and Garden Grove often feel like their own cities. Even the smallest malls are densely populated with stores supplying everything you might need to survive the apocalypse.
There’s Hanoi plaza, a compact center with its own ecosystem of pho, an herb shop, a vegetarian restaurant, fried chicken, a place to buy a mobile phone, a bakery and feng shui store.
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Just across the street is Bolsa Plaza, with not one, but two beauty supply stores, a pharmacy, a salon that specializes in lashes and a restaurant that boasts stellar bun bo hue. You could spend an entire week eating along this specific stretch of Bolsa Avenue, between Magnolia and Euclid streets, and barely scratch the surface.
On a recent Saturday, I packed my cooler for leftovers and decided to try. I chose three restaurants in the area, plus a tea shop and a market to visit in a single afternoon.
First stop: Chicken wings at Mama Hieu’s
The first time I had Mama Hieu’s, it was outside of Nho Thi Le and her son Jimmy Le’s Garden Grove home. After losing their restaurant jobs in March 2020, the two decided to start a small catering operation out of their backyard. They mostly made large trays of the Vietnamese garlic butter chicken wings Nho Thi is known for at family gatherings.
Now, the family has a restaurant in the Hanoi plaza with a small dining room. I arrived just after opening to a line out the door and every seat taken. I watched as dozens of cars pulled up to pick up large foil trays of chicken for various celebrations, some of them carrying 100 wings.
In addition to the original garlic wings, Nho Thi now offers spicy garlic, fish sauce and salted egg yolk at the restaurant. There are tater tots, garlic noodles and mounds of white rice garnished with fried onions, too.
The garlic wings were slick with melted butter and plentifully bestrewn with chopped garlic and green onion. Underneath the onslaught of toppings, the coating cracked, a formidable crunch created by combining cornstarch, egg and rice flour in the batter.
The spicy garlic wings started with a respectable amount of heat that built to an eye-watering climax as I stripped the last bits of meat from my second drumette.
Small threads of chopped red chiles clung to the bits of garlic trapped in the sticky glaze of the fish sauce wings. They’re equal parts sweet and salty, with the familiar addictive funk of reduced fish sauce.
The salted egg yolk wings were almost completely sheathed in the bright yellow crumbles. The egg yolks bolstered the richness of the butter-covered wings, with a flavor that closely mimicked Parmesan cheese.
I understand the urge to order the wings by the 100.
Second stop: Bánh uớt tower at Quan Nhii
Next, I drove one mile east to Quan Nhii, in the northeast corner of the Bolsa Mini Mall. I squeezed into one the parking spaces that felt about a foot too small, then put my name on the waitlist outside. It doesn’t matter what time you arrive, there will be a wait.
Everyone at Quan Nhii orders one thing. On each table, there are towers of bánh uớt, presented as 10 pieces of steamed rice paper still warm from the steamer and splayed over colorful plates. You choose your protein and veggies, then spend the majority of your lunch building your own bánh cuốn with every imaginable combination of fillings and garnishes.
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The rice papers are firm and chewy as al dente pasta, but a lot less resilient. It took some work to not tear the wraps when dislodging them from the plates. I filled mine with charbroiled pork, bean sprouts, cucumber, fresh herbs and fried shallots, rolled them up as best I could, then dunked them into a bowl of nước chấm.
At first, I looked around to see how diners at surrounding tables filled their wrappers. A woman next to me seemed to make a sport out of packing as much into the thin paper as she could without it tearing. Mine tore frequently, but they were no less excellent.
Third stop: Sizzling steak at Khởi Hưng Restaurant
For my final restaurant stop, I headed northeast to Khởi Hưng Restaurant, in a strip mall with a parking situation that makes the Whole Foods lot in West Hollywood feel like a Thomas Cole painting. This is where you order meat, in the form of bò lúc lắc and sizzling platters of rib eye.
The glaze on the bò lúc lắc is gravy-like and a tad sweet, littered with bits of chopped garlic and heavy on the black pepper. It may be my favorite iteration of the dish in the area.
My sizzling rib eye arrived in a pool of garlic butter that sputtered and spattered onto my forearms. Soaked in the butter and tender enough to forgo my knife, I vowed to never again return to a steakhouse chain that sounded like Naestro’s, Puth Chris and Glemming’s.
I opted for a baguette with my steak, with tomorrow’s leftover steak sandwich in mind. It was the kind you find at your favorite banh mi shop, pale in color, with a crust that shatters into an airy middle. I tore off a piece and dunked it into the garlic butter, now swimming with meat juice and grilled onions under the steak. Then I went in for another, until tomorrow's leftover steak sandwich turned into crumbs.
Fourth stop: Sunright Tea
I frequent the San Gabriel Valley locations of this tea chain more than twice a week, switching off between the classic brewed teas and one of the seasonal fruit flavors. The name is a portmanteau for “Sunny” and “Right,” and the color scheme for each store is appropriately yellow and bright. During the summer months, there’s a watermelon cooler with fresh watermelon, ice and tea. Or a peach jasmine tea with pureed peach. The temperature hovered around 93, so I opted for the watermelon cooler, craving the sensation of a slushy in the heat.
Fifth stop: Hoa Binh Supermarket
The best way to end a food crawl is with a visit to the market to pick up snacks for the drive home. At Hoa Binh, you’ll find the entire lineup of Irvins salted egg-flavored snacks, cookies, crackers and a wide selection of produce. The day’s win came in the form of Buldak-flavored seaweed snacks. The man at the cash register took one look at the bag, with its panda bear with flames shooting out of the eyeballs logo and the word “spicy!” written in bright yellow letters under three chile peppers across the front and told me to “watch your ass.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
