East Francis goes global

A tasty district stealthed onto Spokane’s restaurant radar recently, creating a makeshift destination neighborhood out of a series of North Side strip malls.

With dense traffic and, let’s face it, pretty low curb appeal, the blocks to the immediate east of Division Street on Francis Avenue don’t seem like the obvious choice for a burgeoning pocket of culinary culture.

But regardless of whether it’s a planned movement or a spontaneous one, it’s happening: Spokane’s North Side now boasts its own International Row.

The past few years saw the opening of De Leon Foods Mexican grocery and deli and Red Dragon Chinese Restaurant in the Fred Meyer-dominated neighborhood and, more recently, saw the reopening of Kay’s Teriyaki Plus, which closed after a fire gutted the storefront in summer 2007.

On top of that, two hidden, unassuming spots opened within the past few months to serve dishes so unique in the area, it’s worth a detour up to Francis Avenue no matter where you live in the Inland Empire.

One spot, The Lunch Box Noodle & Grill, capitalizes on the low overhead of its small, four-seat takeout locale by – say it with me – passing the savings on to you.

Alongside traditional American-style deli sandwiches, the Box offers an array of generously portioned Thai and Vietnamese lunches for dirt cheap prices, including Pad Thai noodles ($5), Mussamun Curry with Chicken ($6) and, to my stoked surprise, Vietnamese Bánh Mì sandwiches ($4).

While it was obvious on one visit that the Box still has to work out the ingredient ratios in the unfortunately bland noodle and curry dishes, the Vietnamese sandwich has the potential to blow minds.

Foodie friends in other cities such as Portland and Seattle (big surprise) have long been singing the superiority of Bánh Mì in the sandwich world, but I had yet to see one on a local menu.

Well, thanks to the Box, let’s just say I think I’ve found a rival to the Monte Cristo (also on the Box menu for $5) in a cross-cultural culinary cage match.

The Bánh Mì comes with a choice of Vietnamese ham, garlic pork, Spam or grilled lemongrass pork piled on a French baguette with pâté, mayonnaise, cilantro, pickled carrots and daikon radish, jalapeños and cucumber.

I ordered mine with moist strips of tender lemongrass pork, full of bright tang and savory flavor.

Let’s just say that with this sandwich available for a measly $4, the national sub shop chains are going to have an even harder time selling me on the value of a $5 footlong.

Kusina Filipina, however, has better odds of luring me away from Bánh Mì at the Box.

Opened in July in the former location of the short-lived Nipa Hut – which also was a Filipino restaurant – Kusina Filipina currently is in the middle of holding its grand opening after a complete and necessary overhaul of the interior by its new owners, Allan and Juliet Esguerra.

On one dinner visit, I ordered a two-entrée combination plate ($7.99), and went with Chicken Adobo and another dish I’d had once before – at Nipa Hut, actually – called Dinuguan.

Juliet Esguerra flinched when I ordered the latter, and for a second I thought I’d mispronounced the word (for the record, it’s din-ooh-GWAN).

“Do you know …” she started, and I immediately realized it wasn’t my pronunciation that worried her.

“Don’t worry, I’ve had it before,” I interrupted.

“OK,” she said with a cautious waver in her voice. “It’s kind of an acquired taste.”

That’s because Dinuguan is a dish comprised of nothing but hunks of moist pork stewed in vinegar and pig’s blood.

And the resulting thick, so-brown-it’s-black meat stew is delicious, with such intense depth of flavor you’d swear Allan Esguerra adds handfuls of spices to the concoction back in the kitchen.

When I asked if that was the case, Juliet Esguerra explained that no, vinegar and pork blood are the only flavor components.

Then, in an endearing and telling display of her knowledge of place, Esguerra turned to the neighboring table and apologized for forcing them to overhear such a grotesque description while they were trying to enjoy their dinner.

As the original marketing director for De Leon Foods just down the street, Esguerra knows her clientele, and realizes as much as anyone that a measure of hand-holding needs to happen when introducing a fledgling culinary market to such foreign flavors and ingredients. But at least she and Kusina Filipina don’t have to face that challenge alone on Spokane’s new International Row.