My-Cahn

1901 NE 39th Avenue
Portland, Oregon
503-281-0594
open every day

Over the past couple of decades I’ve eaten many, many bowls of hot and spicy bean curd soup and cha gio noodles in my neighborhood, and they never seemed to vary much from similar dishes available at other places around town. (Although one of the owners at my local eatery once confided that he had to tone down the hot chiles for his customers at the Beaverton branch.) We’d been blessed, it appeared, with an abundance of good salad rolls, usually within walking distance.

But a little storefront off Sandy has altered the equation. My-Cahn doesn’t pass the proximity test for me, but it has changed my mind about the location of Portland’s best Vietnamese restaurant. It’s in a strip mall in Hollywood, next door to Baskins & Robbins.

Thai food, with its vibrant green curries and incendiary use of chiles, is the darling of southeast Asian cuisines. Pad thai noodles have become as American as pizza, and you can buy lemongrass in Safeway. But the cooking of Vietnam, while similar in some respects, offers an array of contrasting flavors and textures that makes Thai food seem one-dimensional.

Take pho, for example. This beef noodle soup originated in northern Vietnam, where it was traditionally eaten for breakfast to ward off the winter morning cold. It starts with a simple broth made from brisket and flavored with cinnamon and star anise. The cooked meat is layered in a bowl with rice noodles, bean sprouts, and thin slices of raw beef, then the hot broth is ladled over. From a tray of fresh vegetables and herbs, you select cilantro, basil leaves, sliced green chiles, and lime wedges. By the time you’ve added them the raw beef is cooked perfectly pink, and you dive into a bowl of tender and crunchy, steaming and cold, hot and sweet.

My-Cahn makes fantastic pho, but it’s not my favorite thing an the menu. One of the contenders would have to be the House Special Soup, an ocean’s worth of seafood in a light, clear chicken stock. Shrimp, squid, fish balls, chicken, cabbage, onions, scallions, and spouts threaten to spill from the bubbling hot pot. Ladle some of this stuff over a scoop of rice, sprinkle on a few drops of nuoc mam, and laugh at the cold east wind.

Eggplant stuffed with pork or chicken is another dish that sets My-Cahn apart. Long, slender eggplant are bias cut into thick slices, slit open to hold the designated filling, then lightly battered, deep-fried, and served in a translucent red pool of Vietnamese sweet-and-sour sauce, lighter than the Chinese version and flecked with red chile for an extra kick. While salt-and-pepper seafood is common in both Chinese and Vietnamese cooking, I’ve never tasted anything quite like My-Cahn’s salt and pepper green beans, a special one night. The fresh beans were lightly coated with cornstarch spiked with plenty of salt and pepper, then quickly fried. On the plate, they looked eerily like a pile of giant spider’s legs, but they were completely greaseless, sweet, salty, crispy, and one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. On another visit tofu got the same treatment, and the crunchy pieces of bean curd with grilled onion and barley cooked scallion could give French fries a run for the money.

Clay pot cooking evokes the traditional kitchen of Vietnam, where most food was prepared over an open fire. The simple clay vessels, often reinforced with wire mesh, were used for braised dishes and could go from fire to table. My-Cahn offers handful of clay pot dishes, from tender stewed pork and long-simmered tofu flavored with five-spice and black pepper to strips of chicken in a mahogany sauce loaded with slices of fresh ginger. Catfish stewed in a clay pot is a traditional favorite, and while My-Cahn’s version might be a little challenging, it demonstrates why this is served so often in Vietnamese households. Thin steaks of fish, skin and bone included, are simmered in a dark sauce of nuoc mam, green onion, and red chile. The fish is unfashionably overcooked, but the long simmering thickens the cooking liquid and intensifies the flavors. The only way to eat this is with your fingers, and it isn’t pretty, but it tastes wonderful.

I haven’t worked my way through the entire menu yet, but I’ve discovered some real gems so far. Crispy duck is a half-bird, deep-fried and cleavered into manageable portions. Pieces dipped into the ubiquitous nuoc mam cham are heavenly. Marinated beef in lemon sauce provides another version of contrasts: warm beef in a tangy brown sauce, barely cooked onion, just softened and still a bit sweet, crumbled roasted peanuts for an earthy crunch, whole fresh basil leaves, and slices of fresh jalapeno. Shredded pork and roasted pork vermicelli offers pig two ways with thin rice noodles mounded over fresh lettuce and sprouts. The accompanying bowl of nuoc mam cham gets poured over the top, and each bite gives you hot and cold, soft and crisp, sweet and salty.

My-Cahn’s use of high quality ingredients combined with preparations not usually found in your typical Vietnamese cafe move it to the top of my list. That doesn’t mean you should abandon your neighborhood favorite altogether. Just expand your nuoc mam horizon.