It’d be easy to say that food makes a restaurant. Restaurant serves good food. People go. People spread the word. Restaurant is popular and busy. If it were that easy, then restaurants would outnumber houses in America. But I’ve seen a lot of good restaurants shut down because of paltry business and a lot of bad/fair restaurants going strong.
Restaurants that have spent millions of dollars on interior design have had waiters swatting flies while some hole-in-the-wall joints with three-year-old beer calendars plastered all over the walls have lines out the door. Sure, we all want to eat in an establishment that’s clean and bright, but then there’s the place that has obvious sanitary issues that still prospers. If the food is amazing and phenomenal but served on top of an overturned onion crate, then yes, that does add character to the restaurant and food. But there are restaurants — with okay food — that get an F in décor/ambience with Martha Stewart but an A with regulars.
I’ve been pondering this topic since my lunch at Tu Lan last week. I was very surprised and happy to find parking right across from the restaurant. I’m usually frightened to drive downtown — not because of the crime, muggings or random talking people (hey, that exists everywhere) but because of traffic and the meter maids. But I guess there’s a certain charm in telling someone that you braved the mean streets of the Tenderloin to eat lunch with a bunch of college students and FiDi folk.
Perhaps that’s what makes Tu Lan successful: People want to tell people that they went to the Tenderloin to eat at a small Vietnamese dive. Yes, Tu Lan’s food is decent and I enjoy its chicken pho, but the menu does have its hits and misses.
Tu Lan is dark, small and crowded. On any given afternoon, a crowd hovers around the entrance waiting for a table or seats at the bar overlooking the kitchen. If a table is open, you make your way through a narrow aisle with customers inches away on either side. You’re either ushered upstairs or to the back of the restaurant. I was lucky: I didn’t have to wait and was seated next to two huge rice cookers and the storeroom.
I’m glad I was seated in the back — the front seats put you at risk for elbow shoves, jacket slaps on the face and purse bumps on the back of your head. I was watching the steady stream of customers filing into the restaurant, but my attention quickly turned to a woman who was cooking rice.
The wait for my food was short, and my attention was diverted from the rice lady to the Goi Cuon ($4.20), fresh shrimp rolls stuffed with vermicelli, iceberg lettuce and mint leaves. My second bite into the roll, I began to hear a crunchy noise in my mouth from either the sand/dirt on the mint leaves or from the shrimp; it was like fingernails across a chalkboard.
One of my favorite dishes was the Bo Chanh ($4.75), or lemon beef salad. Slices of cooked beef, cabbage, shredded carrots and onions are tossed in a mild, sweet, tangy dressing and sprinkled with ground peanuts that are refreshing to the palate but also filling. The salad wasn’t drenched in the lemon dressing, so the cabbage stayed crisp and fresh.
On a cold day, both the Pho Bo ($4.20), Hanoi-style beef pho, and Bun Mang Ga ($4.20), chicken noodle soup, hit the spot. The beef pho has thick noodles that taste as if they’ve been slightly undercooked to give the noodles a pleasant bite, and the chicken pho uses softer and thinner noodles. Of the two, I preferred the chicken noodle soup. Save for the metallic taste of the canned bamboo shoots and mushrooms, the broth was delicious and comforting. The deeper and more robust Pho Bo featured wider, flatter noodles similar to fettuccine ones, and the slices of beef were medium-rare.
When the plate of Ga Gung ($5.50), ginger chicken, arrived at my table, I had a hard time making out the pieces of chicken. The saucy dish wasn’t what I had pictured ginger chicken to be: a big plate of sliced chicken in a sticky, brown, sweet and piquant sauce. I dipped my chopstick into the gluey sauce for a quick taste and was surprised that it wasn’t the sugary mixture that I’d thought it’d be. All entrees came with a mammoth bowl of rice, which was large enough to feed about six hungry people.
Tu Lan does serve up big portions at low prices, and some of its basic Vietnamese dishes (pho, lemon beef salad) are good. But I feel Tu Lan has become one of those restaurants in the city where customers don’t necessarily go for the food as much as they do for the experience. Whatever reason you go, Tu Lan is worth a visit. But if the line is out the door, come back another time, because the way things are looking now, they’re not leaving anytime soon.
Tu Lan
8 6th St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 626-0927
Hours: Mon. – Sat. 11 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Prices: Appetizers: $4.20 - $5.75; pho: $4.20; entrees: $4.20 - $6.20
Cash only.
Reach the Picky Eater at pickyeater@asianweek.com.