From the outside, New Century Vietnamese looks more like a house.

Only the green awning above the door indicates it’s a restaurant. Once inside, the informality continues, making you feel like you’re in someone’s home. Wood on the walls mimics the landscape of Vietnam and adds to the atmosphere of authenticity.

New Century Vietnamese, located at 518 Kirkpatrick St., strikes a balance of fresh herbs, meats and spices quintessential to Vietnamese cuisine. The prices range from approximately $4 to $12 a dish – the restaurant packs a flavor punch while remaining affordable.

The service throughout dinner remained outstanding. It was the best I’ve ever had at a Vietnamese restaurant. Our water was refreshed throughout the meal, the food came out nearly 10 minutes after we ordered and we didn’t have to ask for the check when finished dining.

The menu is impressive: a sprawling list of mostly meat and seafood dishes. You have to order by number, mostly because there are so many menu items to choose from, but also because you’ll be hard-pressed to pronounce the dish’s native Vietnamese name correctly.

For an appetizer, I ordered Súp măng cua (bamboo shoots and crabmeat soup) for $3.25. The complex soup had deep flavor, each bite with multiple levels of taste: first sweet, seconds later spicy and then sweet again. For the low price, the soup enveloped plentiful tender threads of succulent crabmeat in a light broth, enhanced with scallion and egg. With few ingredients, the delicateness of the crabmeat came through.

We ended up ordering that night’s special, regardless of the fact that the waiter didn’t explain what the specials were – Bánh xèo, a Vietnamese pancake for $14.95. But this Vietnamese pancake is not the pancake you know and love. Instead, it’s made of rice flour, eggs, turmeric and water. The pancake is lightly fried, producing a golden brown crust, yellow from the turmeric. To eat, you take a piece of the pancake, wrap it in lettuce leaves along with some fresh herbs and dip it in an accompanying sauce. This particular pancake was stuffed with whole shrimp, pork, mung beans, bean sprouts, scallions, and served with fresh mint leaves, cucumbers and a sweet chili sauce for dipping.

The idea of the dish was better than the passably tasty dish itself, but the sauce complemented the pork and shrimp nicely. When I tasted each component individually, I found the shrimp to be tough and the pork and pancake to be dry.  The accompanying mint was delightfully fresh and unblemished. Some of the herb’s tough stem, however, was left on the leaf, which was unpleasant to eat.

Vietnamese food combines five fundamental taste elements: spicy, sour, bitter, salty and sweet, and the second main dish — Cá Kho Tộ, Catfish in a Clay Pot for $8.95 — exemplified this. The clay pot retained heat and moisture and, along with the catfish’s high fat content, made the braised fish so tender it practically melted in my mouth.

The key to the clay pot is the caramelized sugar, which created a sweet and pleasantly burnt-tasting sauce — sauce so good I could’ve eaten it by itself. Flavored with plenty of chili, this dish is not for those scared of heat. The Cá Kho Tộ was served with rice, perfect for eating and soaking up the remaining sauce. If I hadn’t been so full, I’d have been apt to ask for another order.

New Century Vietnamese also has a beer and wine list and an additional extensive beverage list, ranging from Vietnamese coffee to salted lime juice to your standard soda. Fret not; there are dessert selections too. I had my eye on a pudding containing gingko nuts.

Although I cannot gauge the authenticity of the food compared to other restaurants, most New Century Vietnamese diners were Vietnamese.

For the price, New Century Vietnamese is a definite go-to. From the amiable service to the chopsticks they use — not the cheap take-out ones — the restaurant makes you feel comfortable from the get-go and in for a special and distinctive experience. You’re transported to Vietnam, well, at least for the few minutes it takes to scrape your bowl clean.

Published on January 15, 2013 at 11:26 pm

Contact Riddley: rsgemper@syr.edu