By Jim Duncan
CVFDude@aol.com
Twitter.com/foodude

“Mi vit tiem” at Lily Restaurant, 3422 Martin Luther King Parkway, 277-7881. Hours are Monday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Promising Lao-Thai-Chinese cuisine, Lily Restaurant opened recently in a venue where several other S.E. Asian restaurants had quickly come and gone. The café’s odd décor (an umbrella hangs from the ceiling, lavender color schemes are sandwiched by brown carpeted walls) has remained virtually unchanged for multiple incarnations. Looks are deceiving in this case — a lot has changed. For starters, the restaurant seems to be busier than ever, even at odd hours of the day. Secondly, the kitchen has distinct style — this is no cookie cutter Asian hybrid.

Like most S.E. Asian cafés, soup is a strong suit here. Unlike most others, soup does not mean pho. In fact you can’t even find “pho” on the menu. “Kuay tiew neau” is a similar Laotian soup made with a mild beef stock. Ordered with “rare beef,” it delivered a side of perfectly rare beef. Ordered with tofu, it brought generous amounts of seared bean curd. Both versions included rice vermicelli and condiments you’d expect at Vietnamese restaurants except with cabbage instead of culantro and cilantro.

Some dishes had Lao names with Vietnamese names in parentheses. “Kaow poon (bun thit nuong)” was a soup from northern Laos made with a stock of pork bones plus galangal, ginger, chilies, garlic, lime leaves, shallots and pork. It was served with ground peanuts, cabbage and carrots. One menu section listed “Chinese soups” that all had Vietnamese names. Their common denominator seemed to be “Chinese five spice” (star anise, fennel, cloves, cinnamon and Szechuan pepper). “Mi thit tiem” was a sensational $9 soup, delivering a quarter of a crisply smoked duck in a bowl of chicken/duck stock with thin egg noodles, scallions, ginger, wolfberries (goji), a prune (I think) and leaves of basil and cai lan, a versatile vegetable the leaves of which resemble mustard greens and the stems of which resemble broccoli. You can also order this dish dry, with duck on the side so it stays crisp.

There were some surprises on the appetizer menu, too. “Vietnamese egg rolls,” a special one-day, were stuffed with black fungus, minced pork and rice noodles and served with pickled white radish, Napa cabbage, carrots and lemon sauce. A Bangkok roll, one of the best vegetarian dishes in town, was stuffed with avocado, tofu, freshly cooked egg, chilled cucumber and rice noodles with a completely different lemon sauce with tamarind. An order of two long rolls provided a dozen large pieces for $4. Banh mi sandwiches were made with rice flour baguettes and a choice of meats, including “falau” which usually means intestines, stomach, lungs, kidney and heart but tasted more like headcheese here. Pot stickers were fried crisply.

Cai lan was featured in several other dishes, both Chinese and Lao. “Pad see ew (banh pho lon xao kho)” was made with flat rice noodles, cai lan, egg, five spice, garlic and a choice of proteins. “Pad kawpao” was one of the spicier dishes I tried, stir fried pork with considerable garlic, chilies, basil and fish sauce. A single curry, red, was offered with generous amounts of chicken, fresh straw mushrooms, cai lan, carrots, basil, cauliflower and snow peas but little or no coconut milk. “Xao xa ot” was a lemongrass and squid dish with cai lan, straw mushrooms, and chilies. Pad Thai was heavy with peanuts. Laotian salads were well represented with familiar ones such as green papaya, seafood and laab as well as some rarely seen ones like “namtok,” which usually means blood or organ meats.

Bottom line — Lily is an exciting new S.E. Asian hybrid with cuisine similar to what one expects in west coast towns where Asians are the majority population.

Side Dishes

WineFest added a Tuesday June 5 event, Wine Flights, that focuses on specific wines or wine pairings, at Gateway Market, Vintage Wine & Spirits, Willis Infiniti, Winestyles West Glen and Sbrocco. Details www.winefestdesmoines.com. CV