Lunch for breakfast

No early bird, I identify with the worm, preferring to sleep through breakfast. Instead, I’ve become addicted to popping down the hill in the afternoon to nearby Lemongrass in Eagle Rock to feast on things with names like goi tom thit, bun bo xao and pho bo bien — delicious, nourishing lunches for only $5.95.

The change of habit started early this summer after my first taste of a Lemongrass spring roll. A see-through rice-paper cylinder allows me an appetizing glimpse of steamed pork, curling shrimp, tangles of vermicelli and sprigs of mint and lettuce.

You get six of these big babies — and peanut sauce — for $5.95. Such a breakfast! Another bundled beauty that beats buttered toast is cha gio egg roll. In this audibly crisp pay sleeve, glassy noodles weave through pork and mixed veggies. For a side dipping sauce, the chili-fearing should stay away from the red sauce: It’s as hot-blooded as the Peruvian Death Pepper.

When wanting a heavier breakfast/lunch for the same $5.95, I often choose bun tom, in which a web of vermicelli is generously sprinkled with grilled shrimp, pebbled with peanuts and slivered with pickled carrots and daikon. Accompanied by house greens and a tangy orange sauce, the dish vibrates with flavor.

Of course on a cold morning (the restaurant opens at 11 a.m.), nothing beats a bowl of pho, Viet Nam’s national dish. The meal starts with a salad that waves the flag: heaping ravels of crunchy sprouts, enlivened by jalapeño and onion slices, basil and cilantro leaves, and a shot of lime.

My favorite pho is a bowl of rice noodles and well-done steak, steaming in a delicious broth redolent of onions, cloves, ginger, beef bone and rock sugar. As a novice pho fan, there was a whole lot of slurpin’ going on — I had trouble at first eating with decorum. These days, I use the ladle as a fulcrum, and don’t overload it with noodles, so people at the next table have stopped staring.

In ordering any one of the six different pho bowls, remember the word is not pronounced “pho” as in “friend or …,” but “fuh,” as in “what the …”

People who have been around tell me that all dishes are not merely “authentic,” as in the sense of being similar to foods served in Viet Nam, but “genuine” in that they are actually Vietnamese. True?
“My chef Kim,” said owner Ray Nguyen, “cooks the same things, the same way as she did in Saigon.” Not refined to suit American tastes? “No. Never.”

What about French influences? “The only things French in my restaurant are baguettes for sandwiches.”

How’s business? “Great,” said Nguyen. “We’ve been open for only 18 months and already I’m set to open a new restaurant next door by next summer. We will serve the kinds of Vietnamese dishes that the kitchen here is too small to prepare.”

How to toast such success? Vietnamese iced coffee, mixed with condensed milk, is a great way to start. Perfectly filtered, it tastes much like Thai iced tea. It’s too early in the afternoon for a breakfast wine, but they’ve got a good one: a Cabernet-like Malbec, Black Mountain Vineyard 2005. (Malbec is
a grape that contributes to some very good red Bordeaux.)

And there’s nothing that helps the cultural drift from an American breakfast to a Vietnamese lunch more than imported beer — Hue or 33 Export. Hue’s brewery is next to the Perfume River that runs through the city. As they say on Radio Saigon, “It’s the water.”

The 40-seat dining room at Lemongrass is dressed smartly: of minimalist design, not overstuffed. One wall, with a few simple artifacts, is bracketed by two elongated mirrors and cornered with a twining tropical vine at one end and an Alice in Wonderland vase of something at the other. In between, artificial orchids grow out of sugar cane stocks. On another wall, black-and-white sketches depict native scenes: village, mountain lake and seaside.

At all hours at Lemongrass you can eat or drink a lot of what you like; and without worry over waistlines — weight problems never seem to follow Vietnamese feasts.