Minh's

I'm getting sick of myself say "Washingtonian's top 100," but I'm forging ahead with new cuisines, neighborhoods, and menu items, sometimes at the risk of my own health. Thankfully I have the assistance of friends like Mike, who watched me (and offered to help ensure I didn't) almost choke to death at my own gluttonous hand this evening.

Virginia's selections on the top 100 are a bit.. quirky. And there is no uniformity: there's the Inn at Little Washington, quite possibly the most romantic (and thus formidable) restaurant on the list where I feel I can only go with my parents or a boyfriend. Who I have to find in one month who could then possibly be worthy by December (to make the last minute cut). There's also PassionFish, with clever seafood, ceviche with popcorn, and mojitos, and Willow, where I had criminally delicious portabello fries, mussels, and bar foods. Anyway, point is, these places are, respectively, far out in the country, in a planned community, and on the first floor of a mini skyscraper and unexpectedly good in spite of their unconventional locations.

The top 100 list also includes at least three Virginia-based Vietnamese places, a sometimes underrated cuisine, including Minh's, where Mike and I went tonight. Minh's is on Wilson Boulevard, in the bottom of an office building I've passed for five years without noticing. But it's easy to see why it's on the list: you could taste the individual ingredients and they were good. And that's encouraging, as we chose five items from a 15-page menu. Food math is more germane and thematic when I'm working off a top 100 list, that's for sure.

We started with Asian brews--Tiger and Lao beer--pleasant both for their crispness, cool labels, and price.

My brilliant idea was that we should order the steamed escargot with ground pork, black mushrooms, ginger, and onion, stuffed in an escargot shell. Even more brilliant was my decision to ladle a spoonful of spicy ginger/pepper sauce on my bite of meatball (that's the gluttonous/prideful part; I think the sauce subsumed the bite) and proceeded to prolifically cough, sniffle, and run mascara all over my face and napkin. It was charming. A bit like the palatability of the appetizer. The flavor was delicious, but the combination of textures of mushroom and escargot became a bit unnerving the last few bites.

Mike's legitimately clever idea was to order pho and Minh's equally clever idea was to serve it in three sizes, so we each had a cup. I'll insist my favorite place in Oklahoma is better, just because I'm uppity, but the meat tonight was tender, the noodles were perfectly cooked, the broth needed no additional seasoning, and it was perfectly sized and proportioned.

After trying the appetizer, I backed off from any aspiration for oxtail or jellied pork for dinner and instead had Heo and Tôm Kho Tộ, caramelized pork and shrimp with green onions, served in clay pot. It was exceptional: tender pork and lots of shrimp, in a rich, sweetened but savory, thick sauce with wilted yet luxuriously flavorful onions.

Mike got ginger beef, but my dinner steamed up the lens.

However, neither excessive local humidity nor personally-intolerably-high-levels-of-ginger will keep me down: Wednesday is chez Alain Ducasse, quite possibly the culinary love of my life.