Craving Vietnamese?
Chef Christine Ha’s latest venture.
Strings of white lights illuminated the patio at Xin Chao, chef Christine Ha’s new modern Vietnamese restaurant, on a recent Friday evening.
Tubes of ice-blue neon over the new entrance doors cast a frosty shine on the the navy-blue picnic tables, gleamed in the glassware, tinged the whole outdoor room — the stately bald cypresses, the market umbrellas, the crisp white fencing — with an otherworldly sheen.
A row of tall heat lamps stood at attention, but with the temperature hovering in the lower 70s, they had nothing to do. It was one of those forgiving winter nights thatmake Houston a pleasure whenmuch of the country is shivering, and I was there to enjoy it with the last two people inmy ever-shrinking pandemic pod.
There was a birthday to celebrate. And a brave new restaurant from one of the city’s most talented chefs.
Ha, who is famous as “The Blind Chef” who triumphed in Season 3 on “MasterChef,” opened a brilliant little kiosk, The Blind Goat, in downtown’s Bravery Chef Hall last year. Her food was so subtle, so personal, so accomplished that I began hoping hard that she’d open a fullfledged restaurant, the sooner the better.
Well, it’s here, at the worst possible moment, in the lowslung structure that once housed Beaver’s.
Barbecue-and-beer-slinging roisterers once filled the picnic tables in this big, rustic backyard on a shady corner of the historical Old SixthWard. Now, transformed on a shoestring by Ha’s husband and partner, John Suh, that space has become a crucial amenity for the fledgling operation, which is not quite 2 months old.
If you’d like to sit outdoors, reserve online. No, the process does not specify “patio” tables, but they are booked as such, as I found out when I arrived — thinking indoor tables were by reservation and the patio was for walkins. It’s the opposite.
That’s the trend — the same thing happened tome at Pier 6 Seafood. As restaurants scramble to keep up with changing pandemic circumstances and customer preferences, their website info may lag behind. My new rule is to call ahead, always, if I plan to sit outside.
Ha is on hand most nights to oversee things, as is her co-chef, Tony Nguyen, whomade his name at the late, lamented Saigon House in Midtown. It’s a happy pairing of talents. You can taste it in the pair’s Not Our Ma’s Eggrolls, stuffed with a mix of pork, crab, shrimp and black fungus. The peppery note on the finish (white pepper? I wondered) has such unexpected authority that youmight even forget to dunk your roll in the very good fishsauce vinagrette alongside.
Those egg rolls are the staidest item on the menu. Surprise lurks everywhere else on this welledited document, which adds exciting weekend specials for further interest. That’s how we ended up with a trio of long, resilient razor clams in their shells dressed with scallions and shallots in crisps and slivers, the effect somehow meticulous and effortless-seeming at once, a hallmark of Ha’s cooking.
Big, smooth-fleshed stone crab claws were on special that night, too — a welcome splurge with their sweet-salt flavor of the sea. Two sauces set off the crab: a crazy little russet-hued hot potion and an inspired beef-tallow aioli, opulent smoky-edged stuff tempting enough to eat by the spoonful.
Or to apply to the unusual, comma-shaped “Sidewinder Fries” that come with Xin Chao’s memorable fried chicken, a playful Vietnamese version that leaped right intomy favorites list. The chicken is soaked in lemongrass-flavored buttermilk that gives the meat a delicate, tart note, then fried in a pandan-rice batter that ends up both crisp but yieldingly downy, a near-impossible feat.
Gosh, it’s good. Especially in tandem with that beef-tallow aioli, or a drizzle of hot saté honey, set off by pickled cucumber slices and chased with those Sidewinder Fries.
I could have happily consumed a dozen of the beef-cheek dumplings on special that night, their fragile wrappers curled around earthy beef shreds, the flavors etched by a rich, gingery condiment and pickled red jalapeño wheels that brightened it all up.
There was plenty of birthday drama in two huge and deeply savory 44 Farms beef ribs, smoked and served bones akimbo on an extraordinary cushion — rice noodles pan-fried into a cake that both crunched and yielded. It was a textural effect that reminded me of the push-and-pull of the fried chicken textures; again, a Ha signature.
Clever cocktails, a short slate of local beers on tap and a brief but appealing wine list all make this festive food even more so. I ordered the frozen pandan colada in a jokey mood, but the joke was on me: The tropical mix of soju, Captain Morgan coconut rum, pineapple and pandan leaf was a vacation in a highball glass, with the fun of explosive kiwi tapioca balls bumping around the bottom.
Even the gin-and-tonic variant surprises, with its refreshing boost of apricot oolong tea and syrup fromthe slightly tart rambutan fruit. Local maven Linda Salinas consulted on the list with generalmanager Christopher Nguyen, who acts as de facto sommelier. He recommended a really lovely Dolcetto d’Alba that spanned fried chicken and beef ribs with the greatest of ease, at an attractive bottle price of $42.
What were you doing in the Before Times, we asked him. He was arranging beverage and catering services for a touring Cirque du Soleil troupe, it turned out. With that business model shut down, he ended up back home in Houston. So did our food runner, a recent Wake Forest University economics grad who became a regular here at Xin Chao after walking past with his girlfriend, then signed on to help out .
Here we all were under the twinkly string lights, disconnected from our old lives and knitting up the strands of our new ones. It felt like a gift, precarious and thus even more valuable.
My two friends and I went home buoyed on a cloud of impossibly light coconut bread pudding, the kind of counterintuitive feat I have come to expect from Ha.