Review: Mai Lee in Brentwood

When the Guru was very young, and indeed he was at one time, his early experience with Chinese cuisine brought wide-eyed excitement on several levels.  First, there was the superb food with mysterious texture and flavor.  Second was the fact that waiters never wrote down orders, yet had the uncanny ability to always bring the correct dishes to the correct diner.

The talent remained a secret, though years later, there was a hilarious routine by Buddy Hackett mimicking the waiters at a Chinatown restaurant who showed the same talents for memory that other Asian waiters had showed me and my family.

Menus are longer and more complicated these days, and the waiters at Mai Lee write down the orders, but they have an equally impressive technique.  Read the first word or two from a menu choice, and –SNAP! – the server steps back and reports the number of the dish.

"That's 155," he will say, as soon as you've begun, "Dungeness crab with garlic and tamarind sauce," or "That's 42," before you can finish, "Vietnamese chicken sandwich."

When you consider that the Mai Lee menu lists 280 Vietnamese and Chinese favorites, from clear noodle soup with pork, shrimp and crab stick, to the special St. Paul sandwich, that's a lot of different dishes to keep in mind.  Oh, yes, there's a daily special board with another six or eight dishes, and if one of them is fresh mango with sticky rice, save room for it.

Mai Lee may have been the first Vietnamese restaurant in St. Louis; the Guru wrote about it more than 15 years ago, and the little spot in the strip mall just off the Inner Belt keeps providing large portions of freshly cooked food that ranges from dishes that may be as simple as spiced spare ribs in ginger sauce, or as complex as eel stir fried in hot chilis, garlic and lemon grass, almost hot enough to sear the tongue.  And if you like it hotter, each table has some extra condiments.  Just be careful with the red sauce.

If I have a quibble with Mai Lee, it is that the kitchen seems more interested in completing the cooking process than in trying to help diners have a leisurely experience.  Entrees come to the table before the appetizers are completed, and in addition to creating a stuff-it-down problem, it also brings a where-do-we-put-the-plates problem.  On the other hand, I applaud that the kitchen uses a strong hand with the spices.  Lemon grass, cilantro, peppers, garlic bring positive flavors.  Dishes are not excessively fiery, but there certainly is no wimpy food at Mai Lee.  Keep away from the asterisks if you prefer gentler flavors.

Vietnamese restaurants – all Asian restaurants, for that matter – are happy places for vegetarians, or for people who just like lots of vegetables.  Spring rolls and other appetizers arrive with a plate piled high with lettuce, cilantro, sliced cucumbers, sometimes with green onions and bean sprouts as well.  These vegetables can be squeezed into the rice paper wrappers, or just eaten with fingers or chopsticks or forks. They usually are freshly washed, well chilled and crisp.

Vietnamese cuisine also mixes temperatures, with hot and cold items sharing a plate.  The contrast is slightly off-putting at first, but getting used to the pleasing combinations brings another dimension to the food, and the diner.  One-dish meals, often in clay pots, are traditional in the culture.

Cilantro, a popular ingredient in Mexican cooking as well as Asian, adds a delightful note in rolled-up appetizers.  Fried egg rolls are delicious, but even better are the rice paper rolls with pork and vegetables or pork, shrimp and vegetables.  Cold noodles with sesame sauce are a tangy delight, and so is the pork bun, misspelled as "bunch" (number 36).  It's a lot like the char su bao dumplings served at dim sum meals around town, with slightly sweet dough, and pork in a mild barbecue sauce inside, but this one is considerably larger. The shrimp cake is passable, but nothing special.  Save appetite space for the delicious, flavorful Vietnamese pork sandwich, in a French baguette, or for the BBQ pork roll, equally good.

One of our favorites is the Vietnamese pancake, which shows some of the long-ago French heritage in southeast Asia.  It's much like a egg crepe or an omelet, thin and delightfully eggy, with crisp edges.  It surrounds vegetables, bean sprouts, flavorful sausage and other things, in a portion large enough to provide an appetizer for four, or even an entree for two.

Pho, pronounced "fuh," means soup, and Mai Lee has winners like egg noodle soup with roast duck and black mushrooms, or vermicelli noodles with chicken and vegetables, or rice noodle soup with beef.  Noodle or rice dishes, usually  served in large bowls, include such winning combinations as shredded pork, vegetables and coconut sauce with big, clear noodles.  BBQ beef and shrimp with egg noodles wore a number of raw vegetables as a garnish.  The smoky flavor of the beef spread lightly throughout the dish, a taste to make it a perennial favorite.

Roast duck, Vietnamese style, was especially tasty, but part of that was because it had been finished in a fryer, adding real crispness to the skin.  Traditional shrimp in a clay pot contained steamed, piping-hot shellfish with lots of vegetables, including tomatoes, broccoli, bok choy and mushrooms, while shrimp in coconut milk, lemon grass and curry sauce showed a fine hand with the spicing that brought a lovely tang to the tongue.

Vegetable dishes, with or without tofu, offer a wide range of flavors and that extra-special feeling of having done some good for the body as well as the soul.

And that also saves some room for the mango with sticky rice, a real treat, and some of that wonderful Vietnamese coffee, made with condensed milk to add sweetness and color.  It's a perfect final drink because some time is necessary to let everything drip through and be properly stirred – a little easier if it's done before adding the ice cubes.  More stirring to make it smooth and chilled, and the result is one of the finest combination after-dinner drink and dessert that the palate can imagine.