Viet Bistro and Lounge

Photo: Martha Williams

A chef should follow his gut, cook what he knows and never, ever let public opinion dictate what he does. I wanted to tell this to Daniel Nguyen when we spoke via phone just days before he was to open Viet Bistro in Rogers Park, but I’m a writer, not a consultant. Nguyen has a heart of gold and kitchen skills to match; the latter he’s honed over a decade as the chef-owner of Uptown’s Pasteur. That respected midscale French-Vietnamese restaurant, which will close when that building goes condo in a year or so,  is run by the Nguyen family, who escaped Vietnam during the 1975 fall of Saigon. When a fire leveled the original Pasteur the day before the 1995 Taste of Chicago, the entire family came together and worked through the night wrapping spring rolls from newly purchased product to fulfill their commitment to the city and participate in the Taste. Over the next year, the Nguyens rebuilt Pasteur brick by brick, replicating the look and feel of the courtyard of the house they grew up in in South Vietnam. Bottom line: We want to see this guy succeed.

But somehow, Nguyen got it in his head that the younger crowd doesn’t really want Vietnamese. “They want fusion, small plates and affordable food,” he said when we spoke last month. “So I won’t do anything from Pasteur. I’m going to Westernize different Asian things.”

And that’s just what he did, as opposed to showcasing Pasteur’s excellent fare in Viet Bistro’s swank new digs. (Adjacent to a tablecloth-appointed dining room is a lounge outfitted with leather club chairs and a clean, contemporary bar that will be stocked as soon as the liquor license arrives.) The hodgepodge menu is composed of dishes that not only lack roots and authenticity, but more often than not, simply don’t taste good.

A few strands of seaweed are the only evidence that the house salad is more than romaine lettuce tossed with cherry tomatoes. The lobster meat packed tightly into rice-paper rolls (pictured, left) is mushy and far from fresh, and the sticks of jicama also in the roll offer only a distracting crunch. Given the lack of flavor in the crispy minced chicken spring rolls, the sweetened fish sauce alongside is a welcome addition. Shrimp-curry soup (pictured, top) is the lone standout of the starting lineup, the broth packing depth thanks to shrimp stock, kick from chilies, and texture courtesy of al dente eggplant and plump, tail-on shrimp.

Unfortunately, the disappointment continues with the entrées—whole red snapper loses its flakiness when it’s overfried (the sweet-and-sour sauce surrounding the fish doesn’t help matters), and chicken-fried rice is dry and tastes only of black pepper. The rib eye skewers (pictured, center) turns out to be a highlight, juicy and just salty enough from a soy marinade. But with cubes of meat threaded along with cherry tomatoes and onions, it’s basically an Americanized shish kebab.

Innovation doesn’t arrive with the dessert, which are from megacompany Bindi. The mass-produced raspberry cheesecake and flourless chocolate cake don’t seem to disappoint the packed room of middle-aged diners doing the new-restaurant rounds. But when they move on, it will be up to the locals and the true food enthusiasts to keep Nguyen afloat. He’ll need to go back to his roots to win them over.
—Heather Shouse

1344 W Devon Ave between Wayne and Glenwood Aves (773-465-5720). El: Red to Loyola. Bus: 22 (24 hrs), 36, 151 (24 hrs), 155. Dinner. Average main course: $12.