23 Oct 5th–Oct 11th, 2023 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | cONTeNTs | feeDBacK | OPiNiON | NeWs | feaTuRe | NighT+Day | culTuRe | film | cafe | music | into a brand new, ever so slightly larger rut. This kind of culinary tunnel vision is abetted and amplified by food media that gets the most clicks by showing people already- established favorites. And it’s how a restau- rant like Com Tam Thuan Kieu can serve excellent food in a high-profile space for 15 years and still somehow remain an underap- preciated gem of Mesa’s Asian District. 10 at a time There’s a lot to dig into here, and every little nook of the menu deserves your attention. But if you’re looking for a place to start, the restaurant’s signature dish, the titanic Com Tam Thuan Kieu 10 Mon, is probably your best bet. Com tam — steamed broken rice — is just its humble base. Originally the budget-friendly broken grain byproduct left over from rice processing, com tam’s nubbly texture eventually found favor as a staple of Vietnamese cuisine. Served with a splash of shallot oil and some melted scallions and garlic chives, it’s tasty enough. But the heaping pile of stuff on top is where the action is. Bring an appetite. Or a friend. There’s chao tom (1), shrimp ground into a paste with fish sauce and seasoning, formed into a patty (usually around sugar cane or lemongrass) and cooked. It has a resilient, almost spongy texture and a deli- cate flavor. Wrap the same shrimp paste in tofu skin and deep fry it, and you’ve got tau hu ky (10), encased in an ethereal, wispy crisp. Or, even simpler, there’s tom nuong (2), a pair of shrimp bathed in salty fish sauce caramel and quickly grilled. Suon nuong (3) is a bone-in pork chop cut extremely thin — a quarter of an inch, at most — marked with some smoky char and slathered in sweet sauce that works its way into the rice below. Deep within the pile lies a tangle of bi (4), finely julienned pork skin tossed in toasted rice powder. More about texture, it’s a dry, chaotic jumble with a very mild flavor and a satis- fying, resilient chew. Also grilled is the nem nuong (5), a slice of sweet and garlicky fresh pork sausage that’s finely textured, plump and juicy. Meanwhile, lap xuong (6) is a Vietnamese take on the classic Chinese sausage — dense, dried, chewy, sweet and fragrant and seasoned with rice wine, soy sauce and spice. Another textural trip is the cha trung (7), which is either an eggy meatloaf or a meaty omelet, take your pick. However you describe it, it’s a sliced cake of seasoned eggs and ground pork, flecked with shredded wood ear mushrooms and glassy cellophane noodles that lend it a rough, crumbly texture. Lastly, you’ll find two types of fried roll: cha gio thit (8) and cha gio tom (9), filled with pork and shrimp, respectively. Most restaurants around town will wrap these in spring roll wrappers, but like many Vietnamese joints, Com Tam Thuan Kieu opts for rice paper — the same kind of supple, pale white wrappers used for fresh spring rolls — that crackles and takes on a kind of wild, chewy-crisp texture when it’s fried, punctuated by blistered bubbles of fried rice. There are no rules here. Use a fork, spoon or chopsticks; dip the morsels in the accompanying bowl of seasoned fish sauce or splash it over the top; and eat it all together or meticulously work your way around the plate. Nibble on some fresh cucumber or pickled cabbage whenever it feels right. But however you eat it, once you get through that plate, you’ve already sampled more Vietnamese flavors than most of the folks who habitually slurp pho. Heads up. There are still a hundred and something dishes on the menu left to try. Combinations and permutations Okay, that’s a little misleading. Some might find the menu at Com Tam Thuan Kieu intimidating. But it seems less so when you consider that 90% of the menu is made up of various combinations and permutations of the same handful of dishes. Atop your broken rice, you can also get flanken-cut grilled short ribs in a sticky fish sauce marinade, batons of thinly sliced beef wrapped around sauteed onions called bo bia, or a whole fried Cornish game hen (a bit dry, unfortunately) topped with a fried egg. But most of the 18 com tam offerings are just subsets of the 10-dish platter. What’s more, the com tam toppings, served atop bun kho or Try Com Tam Thuan Kieu’s noodle soups and fresh rolls such as the Phan nem nuong nha trang cuon. (Photo by Dominic Armato) No Pho? No Problem from p 21 >> p 25
