Bep Viet

Review

A frog's leg with a difference

Photo: Heribert Corn In the beginning there was the Eckbeisl. At some point it became a Chinese restaurant, because large portions of cheap ragout with spicy sauce followed by plum wine was something that people in Vienna would put up with. But it didn't last forever, which is why the Chinese restaurants expanded their range to include sushi and curry and called themselves Pan-Asia restaurants. The Pan-Asians disappeared again, and - lo and behold! - This was a little surprising, because as incredibly good and interesting as Vietnamese cuisine is, the sudden boom was not really on the cards, and the Vietnamese community in Vienna is not exactly huge: only a few of the boat people who were accepted in Europe came to Austria in the 1970s and 1980s, and with the fall of the Iron Curtain, a few former guest workers from the communist brother state of Vietnam moved from the Czech Republic to Austria.
This included Nguyen Hung's father and his family. Nguyen Hung soon started working at Pho Sai Gon, and a month ago he opened his own restaurant, Bep Viet, together with his wife Mai Lan. Let's put it this way: Bep Viet is not the most beautiful of all the Vietnamese restaurants in Vienna; with its canteen design and cold LED lighting, it looks a little melancholy. But the location is great. And the Nguyen family also tries to stand out a little from the many other Vietnamese restaurants in terms of cuisine - in other words, to offer exactly what the others do, but with something extra. The summer roll with beef is a case in point: the rice dough rolls with glass noodles and fried minced meat are far from authentic, "but in reality we roll everything in Vietnam anyway, so why not beef too," says Hung. And the rolls (which of course look less pretty than the shrimp-filled ones) really aren't bad either, with a delicate lemongrass flavor, albeit a little unstable (€ 3.80). The crispy duck salad is, as expected, great, pieces of duck, onion, mint, roasted ground rice, chili, delicious (€ 5.20). And then something really different, namely frogs' legs in a clay pot. This is a cooking method from his homeland in northern Vietnam, Hung explains, a scorching hot stew of frogs' legs, tofu, la lot leaves and a strange vegetable that resembles a mixture of eggplant and sweet potato and turned out to be stewed green bananas with skin. The soup in particular - once it stopped bubbling - was absolutely fantastic, great dish anyway (€ 12.90). Don't be put off by the brittle charm and definitely go there. Summary: A new Vietnamese restaurant that may not win a design prize, but cooks wonderful stews. Bep Viet 4th, Favoritenstr. 2 Tel. 01/992 12 00 Mon-Fri 10.30-22.30, Sat, Sun 17-22.30

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