Kau Ba Kitchen
Ebullient chef Nikki Tran’s Montrose restaurant brings something so different, so utterly personal to the city’s Vietnamese dining scene that people sometimes don’t know what to make of it. That’s exactly why I love Tran’s cooking, which excels in resonant dips and sauces, super-fresh ingredients and the inventive use of fruits to create a buoyant, subtropical effect. Consider Tran’s version of shrimp banh mi, which resembles a bruschetta bearing some interplanetary shrimp salad, bound up with tons of Japanese kewpie mayo, gigged with Sriracha and mined with surprise nuggets of mango and jackfruit. Those little shrimp toasts sum up the chef’s off-kilter genius. Tran’s intricate salads are light and invigorating. And her Gulf-Coastinfluenced stylings include a signature “Viejun” crawfish in season, its red-peppery boil singing with ginger and lemongrass, oranges and garlic and Thai basil. Her dishes abound in small touches you’ll find yourself marveling over later: a crunchy flourish of ground toasted rice here; a kimchi-style quick pickle of pear and green apple there. It’s not a polished operation yet, but it is memorable.
WHAT TO ORDER: Chef’s Special Dumplings; eggrolls sheathed in fragile rice-paper squares the chef hand-carries from Vietnam; shrimp banh mi; duck confit salad; Happy Salad; Saigon Sunrise plate/Saigon Sunset plate.
PRO TIP: Always ask what’s off the menu — and when Tran visits your table, ask if there’s a story behind the dish. (Spoiler: There will be.)
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Entree price: $$
Where: 2502 Dunlavy Phone: 713-497-5300 Website: kaubakitchen.com Last year’s ranking: NEW