Another entry in the Olive Boulevard parade of Asian restaurants has arrived. Kim Son Vietnamese Bistro is across the street from the Olive Farmers Market, in another of those buildings that cause St. Louisans to say, "Didn’t that used to be…..?" And yes, Vietnam Star was just the most recent of many occupants. The space is large, freshly painted in bright colors, and while there seems to be a flat-screen television within view at every seat, the sound is, mercifully, turned off, so conversation is possible.
Service is eager, so eager it’s a little disorganized. We received water twice — from different servers — on one visit, and the server popped up with order pad at the ready three times before we’d had a chance to peruse the giant menu. And it wasn’t just us; we saw the same high level of attentiveness at other tables.
However, the food, at least the main courses, is worth this sort of disorganization. Among the appetizers, spring rolls were pleasant but unremarkable in their cool rice-paper wraps, and the moo shu rolls, using the same wrapper, held Asian sausage and hard-cooked egg with the expected noodles. They were tasty, but even more than the spring rolls they needed the accompanying sauce to ease their relative dryness. Banh xeo, the Vietnamese pancake, was unusually crisp but rather greasy. Oddly, the usual fresh vegetable accompaniments, lettuce leaves, sprigs of cilantro, mint and basil and pieces of cucumber, didn’t come alongside. And just before the appetizers were served, the table condiments, which include hoisin sauce in a ketchup-like squeeze bottle, the sweet-hot chili sauce sometimes called "rooster sauce," soy sauce and a spicier chili sauce, were removed, never to return on that visit.
Somewhere between an appetizer and a main course are Vietnamese Style Salads, as the menu calls them. We tried a roasted duck salad, with many good-sized pieces of duck mixed with shreds of green papaya, slender stems of celery, and some red onion in a sweet and sour dressing, absolutely delicious and almost addictive. They’re main-course sized, so plan on sharing, or looking like a pig.
Pho, which is pronounced "fuh," and means soup, is a classic Vietnamese dish. We’re sure it’s one of those things that everyone’s Mom makes a little differently. We’re here to tell you, the chef’s mom was a real star. It begins with a large tureen of steaming broth, its flavors beautifully balanced, brimming with noodles and thin slices of beef, plus many other possibilities. The pho we chose also contained seasoned beef balls with that slightly rubbery texture that Asian meatballs often have, very tender beef tendon, and one small piece of tripe. Alongside comes a plate of bean sprouts, paper-thin slices of jalapeno, some herbs, including cilantro, basil and a long, narrow leaf we can’t identify but which smells much like Italian parsley, and a wedge of lime. These are added to taste, but for beginners, they may well be superfluous. Unlike some phos, this one was not heavily laced with the anise-like notes of the Asian basil. It’s a superior dish, easily shared, and would make a nice starting point for someone new to this food.
Bubbling hot pots are popular; we saw several going by and we tried one, although it wasn’t listed with the hot pots, but under the house specials. Called Pot of Pearls (pictured below), it included oysters, of course, along with mushrooms, barbecued pork, fried tofu and a little cabbage in what’s called the "house brown sauce." We’re not sure what’s in it, but the flavors caused much happy discussion. The large oysters aren’t overcooked, and the sauce is subtle enough that it doesn’t overwhelm their flavor. We also tried another duck dish, called Treasure Duck. It was supposed to be a half duck topped with seafood, snow peas and mushrooms in another "house special sauce." There was no apparent seafood, but the duck and vegetables were awfully tasty. Less seafood, more duck. Fair enough.
A section of the menu called Pressed Vermicelli was a new one. We expected a fried noodle cake, but what arrived was a pressed-down bed of unsauced rice-flour vermicelli, extremely thin noodles, topped, in this case, with grilled shrimp, beef, pork, chicken and a couple of pieces of egg roll. According to a proprietor type who dropped by our table, they are made in-house, and are, as he promised, full of meat, quite excellent. (We’ll try a whole order of them next time.) The dish was sauced with a milder version of what can be an extremely fiery sweet-hot rooster sauce, and the meats were moist and lean.
It arrived with a stack of dry rounds of rice paper and a bowl of hot water, plus the lettuce, bean sprouts, herbs and dipping sauce that accompany many items on Vietnamese menus. The drill is to soften the rice paper by soaking in the water, top it with some meat and rice, plus whatever you’d like off the vegetable plate and roll it up like an egg roll. It’s finger food, and you can also use lettuce leaves the same way, sparing you the rice paper dance. Lots of different tastes and textures dance around in this dish, and we were more than pleased with it.
There are also some Chinese items on the menu, although they’re not in a special section. The Old China Hand tried crispy Hunan shrimp, a superior dish with the shellfish surrounded by pork, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and a generous amount of ginger. Mixed vegetables, stir-fried in a garlicky brown sauce, brought another series of flavors that combined to be quite successful.
The fortune cookies were fresh, too, and we were a bit disappointed when one did not say, with great truth "Be patient and you will be rewarded with excellent food."
Kim Son Vietnamese Bistro
8080 Olive Blvd, University City
314-432-8388
Lunch and Dinner every day
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: Good
Smoking: Yes
Entrees: $6-$23
Comments
One response
The overall atmosphere is relaxed, and the menu is quite good, but my wife and I were treated very rudely both times we ate at Kim Son — definitely the two most unpleasant dining experiences we’ve had since moving to St. Louis from New York City. Both times we never had a stable waiter/waitress (so we essentially never got things we needed, like napkins) — I would have to wave madly to a waiter who happened to pass by to get 2 plates to eat with a main course that was more or less thrown rudely onto our table. Mind you, my wife and I are NYC natives, and we’re used to the not so friendly service of Chinatown NYC, but Kim Son was actually worse. We’re both low-key, non-demanding people, so we don’t expect much, but the service staff here was snobby, unfriendly, and worst of all, unhelpful to “outsiders”. We will not be returning to Kim Son, which is unfortunate, because the menu is good and the manager seemed nice. The service staff is TERRIBLE. Don’t eat here if you’re out celebrating something — you’ll leave feeling insulted and depressed.