Bánh Khọt Vũng Tàu Restaurant

🇻🇳 VIETNAM / HISTORICAL: Join Hồ Chí Minh City's holidaymakers and enjoy the specialties of beautiful Vũng Tàu.

🇻🇳 VIETNAM
📍 9110 Edinger Avenue,
Fountain Valley, Orange County
🅿️ Ample parking in plaza
🥤 No Alcohol

📸 All photos by Jared Cohee
for Eat the World Los Angeles

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📆 Original Article 03 October 2021

Throughout California you will see the city of Vũng Tàu's name invoked in restaurants and other Vietnamese businesses. As well as being a major port city, Vũng Tàu was once a French colonial town and because of its long stretch of beach is now very popular with holidaymakers from Hồ Chí Minh City, who travel out to the coast by hydrofoil.

The beaches and tropical setting, with tall residential buildings and mountains serving as the backdrop, seem much further from the metropolis than they actually are. Vũng Tàu is also a land of its own due to the sheer ubiquity of eateries specializing in bánh khọt, a specialty of the area.

Unlike the bánh khọt found nearby at Brodard Restaurant and some other Orange County eateries, this bánh khọt is created without mung bean, only coconut and rice flour. Its thinness makes the whole thing very crispy without the soft center of the other style. The almost five year old restaurant serves three versions of bánh khọt ($11.95, above), shrimp (tôm), ground pork (thịt), and a vegetarian option (chay). These can be combined like the plate above which includes bánh khọt tôm and bánh khọt thịt.

Alongside plates of these specialties, your table will receive fish sauce dip for each diner as well as a pile of lettuce, mustard leaf, mint, basil, and perilla. Take a big leaf of lettuce, stuff some herbs, shredded green papaya and carrot, and the bánh khọt, dip everything, and try stuffing the whole thing into your mouth like you were back in Vũng Tàu.

While all customers here will come for the bánh khọt, many at lunch also had bowls of hủ tiếu sườn non ($11.95, above), a pleasant savory noodle soup usually eaten for breakfast in Vietnam. The pork bones that have been simmering in the broth make it almost seem sweet when it finishes. Along with chives and onions, the main heft of the ingredients are braised pork ribs.

There is also a wonton soup (mì hoành thánh) and a couple different rice dishes to round out the very small menu. These all seem to be complementary items to join your bánh khọt, as not many people will come here for those dishes on their own.

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