Saigon Deux: Vietnamese, but different than what I'm used to

Area:  about 500m north of Kokusai Center Station, Exit 2 国際センター駅
Restaurant:  Saigon Deux  サイゴン２
Website and Map:  http://cafedufi.com/saigon

Hours:  Lunch 11:30am-2pm, Dinner 6-10:30pm (10pm on Sun and Holidays), closed Wed


I've been craving the salty fish sauce flavored Vietnamese food lately, so when I came across this restaurant I had to try it.  I went with the popular 780 yen combo lunch.  It included a salad, pho, and a rice dish.

First the salad.  It was colorful and dressed very lightly with seemingly only vinegar.  The rice dish was a curry using many different spices making it quite different than the Japanese curry.  It however did not remind me of the Vietnamese I'm used to eating.  It had noticeably had sansho or Japanese pepper in it.  The pho also was not the beef pho I'm used to.  This one was a chicken breast meat soup so it was quite different than the beef soup that's usually simmered for hours. The meat however, was pretty juicy.

I also ordered a spring roll on the side (280 yen).  Perhaps the seafood one would have tasted more like the rice paper fried rolls that I like, but this was the only one available a la carte at the time.  It had larger sticks of vegetables in it that went nicely with the sauce.

Although I was a bit disappointed because it was not the Vietnamese food that I know, the flavors were overall a nice change.  I have heard that depending on where in Vietnam you are, the local tastes are quite different, so perhaps this restaurant's flavors are from a different area than the Vietnamese restaurants I know back home.