Saigon Kitchen
835 NE Broadway, 281-3669 3829
SE Division, 236-2312

Something I generally hold to be true is that it's virtually impossible to fry cubes of tofu perfectly. Usually, either the cubes are cut too thick, and the pasty-white middle is squishy and mealy from undercooking... or they end up coming out something like potato chips, flat and crunchy and dripping with oil. The culinarily inclined may try to argue with this hypothesis, but ask anybody with an aversion to cooking, and they'll tell you the same thing. I once sustained third degree burns to my hand while trying to grill tofu cubes. Tofu is a feisty substance, and you have to know how to manipulate it.

The cooks at Saigon Kitchen, however, are magicians--every time, their tofu cubes are gleaming and golden, the exact right consistency of crispiness, devoid of excess oil, but moist enough that each cube explodes in crunchy bursts in your mouth. The perfect way they stir-fry tofu is undoubtedly an act of God.

There's one dish in particular--stir-fried vegetables with vermicelli noodles or "number 62" (on the menu), or "the poor kid's feast" (on the street). For a measly $5.95, it comes in a humongous bowl that will yield at least one more meal of leftovers. Clumps of skinny rice noodles are piled with crisp broccoli, snow peas, bean sprouts, cabbage, carrots cut in an attractive zigzag shape, and the aforementioned crispy pillows of heaven--the perfectly cooked tofu. The vegetables are all stir-fried flawlessly and full of crunch and flavor, adding to the dish's delectable simplicity. It is accompanied by a vinegary sauce that smells slightly fishy, but it doesn't need it--the meal's natural tastes and aromas are too tasty to cover up. In fact, Number 62 is practically unseasoned; as with the best Vietnamese foods, it's the mixing of textures--soft with crunchy with mushy with silky--that makes it so heavenly.

Saigon Kitchen has a very large menu, but I am a creature of habit, and the only other dish I've tried is the Pad Thai, which is peanutty and, of course, includes a delicious helping of tofu cubes.