Camera count: 1 million Someone yelling "egg roll" in the kitchen count: 53
Bistro B (Authentic Asian Cuisine) is all kinds of awesome. It's delicious awesome. It's cheap awesome. It's what-the-fuck awesome. It's scary awesome. It's "Aww, dammit, this Thai iced tea has those chewy brown gelatin bubbles in it. It's like I'm drinking a chewy dump. Why am I chewing a drink? This is wrong." awesome.
It's all of the awesomes.
Bistro B (9780 Walnut St. #340) is the Cheesecake Factory of Asian cuisine. The menu is ridiculously huge. I saw more than 500 numbered dishes, including a list of smoothies that includes the "Jack Fruit" (The Internet will tell you that "jackfruit" is the largest tree-borne fruit. I'll tell you that if anybody ever offers you a free "jack fruit smoothie," you should say, "No, please.") and "Avocado Mung Bean." Also worth noting was number 424 Nuoc Lanh Chai, which is a beverage described as "water bottle."
After about 15 minutes of flipping through the best menu I'll ever read, I ordered the "105 Bun Cha Ha Noi." The menu said that this "Ha Noi Style Grilled Pork Vermicelli" would be served with "bean sprouts, mix lettuce, carrots, cucumber, onion, peanuts and fish sauce." The dish was $6.99.
As I waited for my lunch to arrive, I looked around the huge restaurant, which, by the way, was packed. All the servers wear Britney Spears-y/telemarketer headsets with microphones. And if you look up, you see about a thousand cameras on the ceiling. Who puts a thousand cameras in a restaurant? Either none of those cameras work or we were all on a reality show called Haha Stupid: The Show Where We Watch Dumbasses Try To Eat With Chopsticks.
When my food showed up, I was stunned. All the vegetables and the noodles arrived in a bigger-than-Andre-The Giant's-big-face giant freaking boat-shaped platter, which had a fuck-ton of mint in it. And the "Ha Noi Style" pork? Basically, it was a few of the cutest pork patties I've ever seen and bacon. Best. Vermicelli bowl/boat. Evar.
I will be headed back to Bistro B as soon as possible, and I urge you to check this place out, too. They're open seven days a week, and until 2 a.m. on Saturday nights. Can you imagine how amazing it gets at Bistro B at 2 a.m.? Let's go there and do avocado mung bean body shots, y'all. Bistro B is a hard yes.
