Kim Do stimulates the palate

We walked into Kim Do, the friendly little (50-seat) Vietnamese restaurant near the Gonzaga District, and the aroma hit us like heady perfume. We detected lemon grass, cilantro, fresh basil, lime and other sweetly aromatic flavors of Vietnamese cuisine.

“That’s a good sign,” said one of our dining companions, who we’ll call the Culinary Curmudgeon. “This joint even smells good.”

Not that we had much time to stop and smell the lemon grass. On all three recent visits, we hardly set foot inside the door before Kim Do herself, the dynamo who runs the place, was waving us over, saying cheerily, “Four for dinner, right over here, please!”

A prompt welcome is an excellent sign in any restaurant, yet especially pleasant here, where the uninitiated might otherwise feel a little awkward. Not that Vietnamese restaurants are anything new – Spokane has had them for at least a decade. Yet any place with menu items named Bun Do Bien Xao Xa Ot can carry a certain intimidation factor.

That’s one of the things that sold me on this restaurant early. Kim Do is a born restaurateur, intent on making everyone feel at home, from the many Vietnamese-American regulars to the first-timers who don’t know their Bun from their Thit Nuong.

During one visit, she walked up to our table, pointed to my bowl and said, “You’re a brave man for trying that.”

She meant for trying Pho ($5.50), the restaurant’s signature Vietnamese soup dish.

You don’t actually need any courage to try Pho (pronounced like “fun” with the “n” left off). It is simply a fragrant beef- or chicken-broth based soup filled with noodles, meat or seafood and green onion. A plate of fresh bean sprouts, whole basil leaves, jalapeno chilies and lime wedges is provided on the side, for adding to the soup as you see fit. I suggest adding it all (and maybe throwing in some chilies from the condiment tray) and then thinking of it as a delicious all-in-one soup and salad combo.

Two other things that sold me on this restaurant: the prices ($5.95 average for an entrée) and the freshness of the cool, crisp vegetables.

The Pho is the specialty, but for relative Vietnamese-food novices, I would suggest one of the two other main-dish categories: Com Dia (steamed rice plate) and Bun (vermicelli rice noodle bowl).

Based on extensive sampling, here are a few suggestions from those categories:

• Bun Thit Nuong Cha Gio ($5.95, vermicelli with grilled sliced pork, deep-fried egg rolls, bean sprouts and lettuce). Like all of the vermicelli noodle dishes, this one consisted of a bed of snow-white, super-thin rice noodles covered with a variety of well-marinated meats and toppings of fresh cucumber, tomato and lettuce. This big bowl was accompanied by a small saucer of sweet-and-sour sauce, pungent with the flavors of fish sauce, vinegar, sugar, lime and chilies.

My advice: Pour it all over the top. This sauce gives the dish extra tang and some welcome saltiness. By the way, if the above menu name is too much of a mouthful, just refer to it by number, 32. My dining compatriots and I also can vouch for No. 33 and No. 34, essentially similar except the toppings are, respectively, grilled chicken and grilled beef, both marinated nicely in lemon grass and chilies.

The Culinary Curmudgeon, normally difficult to please, could barely shut up about how much he liked it.

“Everything has so much flavor,” he said, shoveling it in.

• Com Ci Ri Ga ($5.95, steamed rice with chicken curry). The steamed rice dishes all consist of a bed of rice covered with a variety of stir-fried meats and, in this case, a curry sauce with a burnt-orange color and a pleasant aroma. We also can vouch for the other steamed rice dishes, which are similar except instead of curry you get lemon grass-and-chili-marinated chicken, pork or beef.

Order several and share them family-style, with about one entrée per person, plus an appetizer of the outstanding Goi Cuon ($2.50) fresh Vietnamese spring rolls with shrimp, noodles and vegetable. With its transparent rice-paper wrappings, it looked like a diffused abstract artwork: green from the vegetables, white from the noodles, orange from the shrimp.

With all of these choices, three of us came out of Kim Do fairly bulging with good food.

“I feel like I’m going to have a wrongful birth,” said the Culinary Curmudgeon, patting his belly with a satisfied air.

Ooo-kay.

We did find a few items to stay away from. The various Vietnamese chow meins seemed like uninspired concoctions of egg noodles, meats and vegetables in a pointless attempt to imitate Chinese food. Why bother with this when there are so many fine vermicelli noodle dishes on the menu?

The same goes for the Pad Thai, a Thai staple. Kim Do’s consisted of a gummy mass of noodles with an orangey, too-sweet sauce over the top.

Stick to the real Vietnamese items. If you get brave enough, you can even order the Pho with some items that do require a bit of courage: the tripe, the tendon or the meatballs. Meatballs is a misnomer – they are more like chunks of sausage that also contain tendon. Tendon is just what it sounds like: pieces of chewy, slightly gelatinous beef tendon.

They were actually quite tasty, but the rubbery texture put me off. The Culinary Curmudgeon wouldn’t even try it.

“I’m not gnawing on any tendon,” he growled.

By the way, my Pho also had a golf-ball-size chunk of beef rib at the bottom. I found it tasty, but difficult to deal with, until Do came by and told me the proper procedure. Just pick it up with your fingers and gnaw on it, she said.

The beef bones serve mostly, of course, to make the broth. However, the regulars apparently feel deprived if they don’t find a bone or two in their bowls.

Only one dessert is offered: fried banana with vanilla ice cream. It’s oily and soggy and easily skippable. Do not, however, skip the traditional sweet and creamy Vietnamese beverage, the iced coffee with condensed milk ($2).

The service is remarkably fast, especially considering the size of the menu. And presentation is artful, with attractive china and large, inviting bowls. The restaurant’s ambience comes mostly from the two TV sets, playing a kind of Vietnamese karaoke, complete with lyrics for singing along.

“We’ll get you a microphone after you finish dinner,” said Do, teasing the Curmudgeon.

He barely looked up. He was too busy shoveling in more vermicelli.