She met up with Robert Wulff of developer B.F. Saul, the firm overseeing Wheaton's redevelopment, at Saigonese and talked about lessons learned from Silver Spring's downtown redevelopment of the past decade:

He contends there are now more small businesses than before, since those that could adapt thrived, and the office development provided a customer base for more to start up.

The same will happen in Wheaton, he says, digging into a plate of chicken and rice at a Vietnamese place on Grandview Avenue. Even with top-notch bánh mì sandwiches at $2.50 a pop, the restaurant doesn’t do much lunch traffic, which is typical of Wheaton eateries. Adding a few thousand office workers would change all that—for restaurants that can market themselves to a new clientele.

“Small businesses have to think big. They can’t think about who their current customer base is and what their current products are,” Wulff says. “They have to think about who’s coming, what are they going to buy, what are they going to eat. Do they want to roll, or not?”

Easier said than done for Julio Cruz, owner of Sergio’s Place on Fern Street. He has expanded his businesses, offering karaoke and starting a pupusa-making operation, but business is still slow—his bread-and-butter clientele, day laborers on area construction jobs, haven’t had as much disposable income lately. And he doesn’t think he can serve his food fast enough to attract office workers at lunchtime.

“Even though I have some Americans that come, they like the food, but it’s not always enough,” he says.

While local neighborhood redevelopment narratives have been dominated by tensions and fights inside the District line, more suburban areas, where plenty of ethnic communities—some with distinct food cultures—have found a home and in the process, have created dining destinations.

How do you think the Columbia Pike corridor in Arlington County's food identity might change with a streetcar line planned? How has the food identity of Arlington's Rosslyn-Ballston corridor evolved over the past two decades as more dense development filled in along the Orange Line? What would happen to the Eden Center if Seven Corners became more transit accessible and Clarendon-style dense development started to take root?

Ethnic food geographic identity is something that's intertwined with urban evolution. And we've seen—and will continue to see—how it plays out, for better or worse.

Photo of Hollywood East's Janet Wu by Darrow Montgomery

Until reader Mike Henry alerted me to Ba Le Vietnamese Deli in Langley Park, I had generally assumed a trip to Falls Church was required for any decent banh mi in the area. But last week I made not one but two visits to the strip center deli.

Four sandwiches later, I'm a serious fan.

Much to my surprise (and shame), Ba Le has been opened for nearly a decade. One of the employees told me over the counter that Ba Le also has a store in Northern Virginia, but if you do a Google search, you'll find (presumably unrelated) Ba Le delis in several locations around the area, and even in another country. Sometimes you'll find it spelled Bale (see picture below for the signage in Langley Park), but I think that's more a function of American ignorance than actual spelling. (Incidentally, after way too much searching, I'm still not sure what "ba le" means, but it seems clear that it doesn't translate into "Paris.")

Whatever. Everything, the counter employee told me, is prepared in-house (well, at the Virginia store) for Ba Le's banh mi, including the pâté and the head cheese for the No. 1 combo. A sign on the bin for the sandwich rolls claims the bread is baked fresh daily, too, but I couldn't confirm via a couple of phone calls today ("I'm busy. Call back later." Click.) if the stuff is made in-house.

The bread can be the weakest link, a little too crackly as the sometimes stale roll breaks down into crumbs all over your lap. But the fillings are fresh and, better yet, smack of fish sauce, that pungent liquid packed with natural umami. This is not a sandwich for tourists.

You can order your banh mi with or without sliced jalapenos, but why anyone would forgo the ringlets is beyond me. Without the heat, the cooling cilantro leaves are robbed of one of their primary functions: playing the foil to the peppers. Ba Le's julienne veggies are lightly pickled, as not to dominate the sandwich, and its head cheese is not a rubbery slice of deli meat daring you to bite into it and pull out a length of chewy pig's ear. This head cheese is carefully prepared to provide just the right amount of texture.

The condiments and seasonings are the final grace notes, whether the yellow-tinted house-made mayonnaise or the liberal amounts of cracked black pepper. They add richness, spice, and, in the case of the fish sauce, a depth of flavor that turns an average banh mi experience into an excellent one.

Tan Nguyen is the 36-year-old co-owner of the new Rebel Heroes food truck, which roams the streets of Arlington, perhaps even as you're reading this. Nguyen and her mother, Ninh, are natives of Vietnam, and together they launched the business with the goal of "revolutionizing the sub."

The focal point of the Rebel Heroes truck is their take on the banh mi, which they offer on traditional rice-flour baguettes. Their menu is split into two sections, the "Old Guard," which are more traditional banh mi, and the "Rebels," which are adulterated versions of the classic Vietnamese sandwiches. Tan Nguyen offers a more detailed explanation in our Q&A, which took place just a week after she and her mom started their mobile banh mi business.

How did you get interested in street vending? And what's your background in cooking and/or food service?

I’ve mostly been front of the house. I managed a restaurant in Tribeca called 99 Hudson, way back when. But basically my background in food service is a big foodie world traveler. I’m a graphic designer, so I do concepts basically. I have a lot of chef friends. I’ve always wanted to have a food truck ever since undergrad at GW. I basically frequented a pasta truck way back when. This guy was the first Rebel Hero, I guess. He used to have a surf board on his truck and, you know, had pasta out of his truck. He was the only thing different on the block. He always had a major line, and he’d like take off at the end of the day and go surfing in Maryland. So I was like, ‘Huh, that’s interesting.’ That [garbled on tape] stuck with me for over a decade. He was a really cool guy…His concept was so simple, like pasta he’d boil in a bag, and he made big bank. There was always a line for him, even though it wasn’t very complicated food. Ours is much more complex than that…My mother does the cooking. She had a restaurant before down in South Carolina [Note: It was a Chinese restaurant with Vietnamese dishes on the side.]. Basically, it’s our foray together, my first as owner, co-owner, but mainly I do concepts and designs. I designed the truck and the menu. The menu was seeing like the natural ties between Latin and Asian foods...I’ve always loved banh mi, and I’ve traveled all over Asia, Europe. I haven’t really been to Latin America yet, but I’ve been to Central America. I’m just really interested in new combinations of flavors and sort of anything new and exciting. I guess banh mi has always been sort of a street food. Historically, it’s always been a street food in Vietnam, and it was always a cheap way to eat. It worked conceptually, but I didn’t want to do a typical eat-in sandwich. It wasn’t very exciting to me. I could just open a deli or whatever, but I’m not interested in that.

Your main items are variations on the Vietnamese banh mi sandwich. How authentic is your banh mi? Does it include a rice-flour baguette? Pickled vegetables? Pate? Are they prepared a head of time or in the truck itself?

We custom-make every single one. I mean, the meat comes prepared ahead of time. We cook out of Open Kitchen, which is in Falls Church. It’s a fully licensed kitchen space. Caterers use it. We share a space there. We cook out of there multiple times a week, and then we take the food on the truck and serve it up. But [we] reheat every portion and we top every sandwich individually. So it’s not fast  food, quote-unquote. We make each and every one of them. It takes a little while, because it depends on [the toppings and dressings]. We have different kinds of mayo for heat levels. So we a Sriracha mayo, which is hot, and then we have a chipotle mayo, which is more smoky sweet, with a little kick but not too much. And then we have a lime mayo for those who are afraid of the spice. So we have something for everyone...But the basic menus are like the Old Guard…it is a traditional Vietnamese and a traditional Cubano, pretty much. I mean, the Cubano is not on the Cubano bread, because we only carry the Vietnamese baguette, which is...the rice and wheat kind, like a baguette, like a French baguette. We get it from a distributor. We get it every day.

On a glance at your online menu, I don't immediately see the classic banh mi thit nguoi with cold cuts and pate. Was that a conscious decision not to sell the kind of banh mi that you can get at the Eden Center? Or was it an acknowledgment that your audience might not want pate and head cheese?

Yeah, I think I consciously, definitely I didn’t really want that. I didn’t think it would reach a mass appeal. I think  in terms of how the flavors blend well together and the ingredients that will work well together with the Rebels. Because basically what we do...is that we top it differently for the Rebels and we add Swiss [cheese], so they have to all work together. So the head cheese and all that, all the cold cuts and the Vietnamese ham and stuff, it doesn’t really work well with the Swiss cheese melted on top. I want the blend to work. We have a very small food truck, so it has to sort of integrate well…We don’t have room for 10 million different items, but what we do, we think we have a really tight menu.

You have a line of sandwiches that you call the Rebels. What makes them Rebels?

The cheese is the major difference, and we found that it’s a really big hit. People love all the Rebels with the Swiss melted on top. If you’re a cheese lover, it really works well. We heat them all and melt them up, and we also let you have the chipotle mayo or the Sriracha mayo on top of that, instead of just the plain banh mayo, which is like what you have for the Old Guard. It’s just like a regular mayo…Then we also will press it for you, like Cubano style, as an option, no additional cost or anything…

You also have an egg sandwich that is, essentially, your breakfast dish. What's the inspiration behind that and what does it include?

I wanted to be able to offer more options for people who are vegetarians, not like vegans or anything, but vegetarian. I’ve been cutting back a lot on my meat in-take, even though I’m Vietnamese. [She laughs.] The tofu sandwich is very popular actually, and the eggs have been as well, because a lot of people want something else other than pork and chicken. So that’s where the egg comes from. I just wanted more vegetarian-friendly options. ..It’s eggs with cheese, scallions, jalapenos, and the Rebel mayo. So it’s nice and spicy...but as with everything, we custom-make each sandwich for you, so if you can’t handle the heat, then we’ll take it off.

Will you sell any sides with your sandwiches?

It doesn’t come with any sides right now. We were going to do plantain chips, but we’re not ready to deal with the deep fryer. We got a little learning curve. With the trucking moving around, hot oil doesn’t really go well. So...for now we’re carrying different lines of chips. We have a really great line of Mexican sodas, Jarritos. You might have heard of them already. So people are really digging that. I might do Inka Kolas in the future…We do shrimp chips. We have big bags of shrimp chips. That’s sort of our special item, and then we have Miss Vickie’s, which are like jalapeno chips and then the salt and vinegar. That’s more like a kettle chip kind of thing. So we offer a little bit of familiarity and a little bit of something new. It’s been interesting because a lot of people have been responding to the new stuff, because they’re like, ‘If I’m getting this different sandwich, I might as well get this different soda.’

You have international accents on your essentially Vietnamese menu, like a Cubano sandwich and Mexican sodas. How did you decide which cultures to include in your venture?

Well, I wanted to expand our menu. The Vietnamese-Cuban is just what we’re starting with, but we’re called Rebel Heroes. We’re not trying to limit ourselves. I would like to do an…Asian-Latin flair always. I feel like the baguette that we have [fits] culturally well in terms of carrying different kinds of flavors and meats….So we might do Korean or we might do Latin, like guacamole spread on top with some of the meats in the future – for people who don’t like mayo, for example.

So is it the cilantro connection between the cultures?

Yeah, definitely, there was a cilantro connection and the pickled element and the pork element, you know. They all sort of go really well together. Some people don’t like dill pickle, but they love the daikon radish and carrots instead. It’s just to give it that tartness. It all works together….I definitely noticed when I was back here, because I just moved back from New York to do this business…I noticed that there’s a huge Latin population here that, like, eats at Vietnamese restaurants…. I think unconsciously that I noticed that. Also, one of my really good friends, she was on Top Chef, and she’s like Puerto Rican and Italian and Filipino [Note: the chef in question is Josie Smith-Malave, who competed in Season 2], and she used to always talk to me about the blend of Latin and Asian cooking, so I got really interested in that combination, probably on so many different kinds of levels.

What do you think the attraction is from one culture to the other?

The spiciness factor. [She laughs.] I think in both cultures we sort of adjust it to our own [liking]. It’s not like it’s in [a dish] and you just eat as is…I feel like we have a very similar way of eating, you know, and styles. Probably even the…climate. We grow a lot of the same kind of vegetables. It’s not like something totally crazy and different. We eat rice, you know. There’s a lot of crossover there.

You opted for a truck vs. a more traditional street cart. What do you think are the advantages to the truck vs. cart?

You mean "street cart" as in one that’s stationary? Oh, yeah, we didn’t even consider a stationary cart. It was always going to be mobile. It was always going to be, like, sort of a party on wheels. We have the speakers, where we might get one of the guys that works with me to sort of MC it on Friday. We have a little party going on on the sidewalk sort of....We’re a fun truck to follow. I don’t think the stationary cart would have worked for us at all. First of all, the truck has a lot more power to it, and I don’t think that Arlington even lets you do those little carts anymore. I think everything has to be enclosed in a vehicle now with a bug screen and everything. You can’t even get a regular street cart anymore. That’s what the inspector just told me…Plus, we wanted to go to D.C., D.C. and Arlington. Actually, people in Arlington have been giving us a lot of love. We’re definitely going to stay in Arlington, too, but if we expand, we’re definitely going to hit D.C. So we wanted to be a mobile kind of business, and plus, I just came back from New York, so we have a lot of food trucks there. We have a coffee truck, a mud truck. I really love food trucks, mobile food trucks to follow. They just sort of drive around. It’s like the ice cream man, you know.

You mentioned that you might go into D.C. Was there some advantage in doing Northern Virginia first?

Oh, yeah, they have a very streamline process. There is very little red tape. Comparatively, it’s so much easier. I feel like food trucks should totally come to Arlington. I would love to start like a food-truck community here and have camaraderie with other food merchants. People have approached me, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, start a food truck!’ I’m a very cooperative person, so I would love to see other food trucks pop up and have other people not be so hesitant to eat at a food truck. They’re very clean…It’s not like we’re just making it out of the basement or something.

What was the main difference between Arlington vs. D.C. in the permitting process?

I don’t deal with that particularly myself, so I can’t give you an accurate assessment. I just know it takes us longer to get them. I just know we can’t get one right now, but we’re in process...for D.C. We’ve applied, but I don’t know what the status is as of now. But we just launched last week, so I think we’re going to focus on Arlington for a bit, you know. A lot of people have been coming from D.C. to eat in Arlington, so I think that’s pretty cool, and the traffic is so much better, so I don’t know. If Arlington gives us a lot of attention, who knows?

Do you see this as an expandable concept with multiple trucks?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, our whole vision has always been to have multiple food trucks…all Rebel Heroes. Eventually, we want to, maybe by fall for sure, we want to do like catered parties and also little events, fun events with the truck on weekends. Yeah, we’re going to need more trucks. You can only sell so much off of one location.

One does not live by sandwich alone. What foods do you like other than sandwiches?

Me? Gosh, what am I a big fan of? It’d be weird to say another sandwich. I’m all of sudden drawing a blank. I eat out all the time, so this is totally horrible that I can’t answer the question. Give me a second. I’ve just been living the Rebel Heroes life. Mom’s cooking really! Anything my mom makes, basically I eat. But if I go out, I guess…I have to say that I don’t really have one particular favorite. I am right now in a Mediterranean kind of mood these days, because it’s sort of light and healthy and I don’t feel like grossed out after I eat. I never eat fast food really. I can’t tell you the last time I had fast food.

If you haven’t yet had the chance to dine under the covered patio at Sea Side, now is the perfect time to sample this Eden Center joint’s unique Cajun-Vietnamese approach to crawfish. As we enter the tail end of the season, crawfish are just now reaching full maturity, which means they’re big and sweet and perfect for owner Tom Vo’s Vietnamese take on Cajun mudbugs. Vo’s crawdaddies are marinated in garlic, ginger, scallions, tangerine juice, lime juice, and fish sauce—that great umami agent of the East—before hitting the kitchen pots roiling with Cajun seasonings, corn, and whatnot. I wasn’t even halfway through my first bag of boiled mudbugs when I decided, right then and there, that these are the best-tasting crawfish anywhere, even without the array of tableside condiments that the Vietnamese so love. Now, if by chance you do miss the crawdad season, which ends in July, you can always check out Sea Side’s version of the soft-shell crab, another delicacy just reaching it prime. Sea Side batters its softie, deep-fries it, and quickly tosses it in a blazing-hot wok with sugar, ginger, scallions, onions, jalapeños, and garlic. Hate to sound like a broken record—hey, do you kids even know what that term means?—but Sea Side’s Vietnamese version is unrivaled in the area.

Sea Side Crab House, 6799 Wilson Blvd., Suite 5, Falls Church, (703) 241-2722

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

The area’s best Vietnamese restaurant never would have materialized without the persistence of Gene Nguyen, who’s among the most unlikely candidates in Northern Virginia to set out on this lofty path. Until he opened Present in Falls Church last year, Nguyen was best known for peddling pho and running a nightclub in the Eden Center.

But seven years ago at his nightclub, Nguyen met a group of folks visiting from Vietnam; they told him about this chef back home who’s been captivating diners wherever he cooks. Nguyen dutifully recorded Luong Tran’s contact information and began communicating with the chef. They talked. They e-mailed. They traded pictures and tips and recipes. After a while, Nguyen finally felt comfortable enough to drop the big one: Would Tran like to cook in America?

No way. Tran was happy staying in Vietnam.

After an apparently unsatisfying attempt to work in Malaysia, however, Tran reversed the roles and called Nguyen himself, looking for work in America. Once he had snagged his prized chef, though, Nguyen wasn’t sure exactly what to do with him. “I knew I couldn’t put him in the pho place,” the owner says about his two Pho Hot outlets. “He doesn’t fit there. That would have killed him.”

Instead, Tran and Nguyen set out to create a Vietnamese restaurant unlike any other in the region. It would be an elegant, meditative space featuring not just dishes from North and Central Vietnam—those areas underserved by Vietnamese restaurants in Northern Virginia – but also home-style meals from the mother country. “We…have a lot of extra dishes that no one has in Eden Center, home cooking from grandma’s kitchen,” Nguyen says, rattling off such Present offerings as the purple yam soup, the grilled eggplant with fish sauce, and the stir-fry mushrooms with chicken gizzards, liver, and heart. “This is the kind of food we’re used to.”

But Present would also reject the cheap and/or frozen ingredients that define many Vietnamese-American restaurants. Present roasts its own peanuts every morning before lunch and every afternoon before dinner, because fresh-roasted nuts are far superior to those sitting in a jar for months. Tran buys fish every morning, too, inspecting the gills on each specimen to make sure it passes his test for freshness. The chef even prepares his fried rice without using previously boiled and refrigerated grains—a cheat that helps keep the grains separate—and also designs more than one house-made fish sauce. Tran, in fact, makes nine, each for different dishes.

“If you have the crêpe, it doesn’t taste right if you don’t roll it up and dip it in the fish sauce,” Nguyen says. “There’s a particular sauce that goes with the dish.”

The chef’s painstaking approach to ingredients and their preparation can be tasted in every dish you order at Present. The imperial autumn rolls—an example of royal cuisine from Central Vietnam, a style for which few chefs aside from Tran have formal training—is as rich and crackly as it is artistic; it’s an appetizer that looks designed by Jackson Pollock. The lemongrass chicken, by contrast, has all the subtly of an air raid, but its considerable heat is tempered by a soft wave of fresh aromatic lemongrass (and maybe a little sugar, yes?). Even a simple bowl of grilled pork over vermicelli takes on special qualities in Tran’s kitchen. The bounty of ingredients in the bowl—daikon, lettuce, peanuts, scallions, pork, noodles, summer roll, and sprouts—are the freshest I’ve ever sampled in a Vietnamese restaurant, right down to the bright orange julienne carrot garnishes, which are often just dry, scaly afterthoughts in lesser restaurants.

Present, 6678 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church, (703) 531-1881

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

This pho parlor in the Eden Center turns out stellar noodle soups. My most recent order came swimming with thin slices of richly fatty brisket, crunchy/chewy tripe, perfumed beef broth, and a garnish plate brimming with sliced jalapeños, Thai basil, bean sprouts, and even that rare saw-toothed leaf, culantro. Pho Saigon also pays attention to its noodles; they’re soft, supple, and so easy to slurp. This tiny shop, overstuffed with trinkets and pictures and boxes of kitchen supplies near the bathroom, would remind you of a crowded Vietnamese street stall if not for the overhead flat-screen TV set to the Speed Network, where racing school buses provide a little redneck comfort. Yep, you get a melting pot here along with your noodle soup.

Pho Saigon, 6795 Wilson Blvd., Falls Church, (703) 677-0523

Chef Hoa Lai of Four Sisters

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

The members of the Lai family have understood one thing better than any other Vietnamese restaurateur: They’re not in Vietnam anymore. So while their institution’s initial success was based on its ability to appeal to transplanted Vietnamese at the Eden Center, the restaurant has shown an ability to adapt to its adopted country. I don’t mean to imply that chef Hoa Lai has sold out Vietnam’s cuisine to cater to the American palate, because he hasn’t. But the Lai family hails from South Vietnam, an area that has two distinct advantages in competing in the American marketplace: It prefers sweet-and-sour flavors over the chile heat of central Vietnam or the hard saltiness of the north, and the region has shown a historical willingness to adopt outside influences. The Lai family has carried on that tradition well, whether emphasizing the fruits and sugars that play to America’s sweet tooth or dropping the odder ingredients that don’t play at all in the United States. Now, the family has built a new restaurant outside of the Eden Center, a gorgeous space full of dark woods and yellow hues, designed to recall the French colonial period in Vietnam. With this, and its other moves large and small, the Lai family has put Vietnamese food squarely in the American mainstream, and it looks great there.

Addendum: To learn more about the Lai family's rise to prominence, read my cover story, Exit from Eden.

 Four Sisters, 8190 Strawberry Lane, Suite 1, Falls Church, Va., (703) 539-8566

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

(703) 677-0523

The first time I visited Pho Saigon in the Eden Center, at the urging of a Vietnamese acquaintance, I sat there listlessly over my bowl, wondering who or what was most off: my friend, my thin pho, or my tastebuds. Turns out that Pho Saigon was merely having an off day. I have since returned to the Vietnamese noodle house and have found its soups spectacular. My most recent order came swimming with thin slices of richly fatty brisket, crunchy/chewy tripe, exquisitely perfumed beef broth, and a garnish plate brimming with fresh sliced jalapeños, Thai basil, bean sprouts, and even that rare saw-toothed leaf, culantro. Pho Saigon also pays attention to the noodles in its soups; they’re soft, supple, and so easy to slurp. The tiny pho shop, overstuffed with trinkets and pictures and even boxes of kitchen supplies near the bathroom, might remind you of a crowded Vietnamese street stall if not for the overhead flat-screen TV set to the Speed Network, where racing school buses provide a little Southern redneck comfort. Yep, you get a melting pot along with your noodle soup. The truth is, if not for the dark memory of my first visit, I’d rank Pho Saigon over Pho 75, that suburban institution that consistently hits the mark at prices impossible to resist. Perhaps in 12 months that memory will finally be evaporated—by all the steaming bowls of noodle soup I plan to slurp down at Pho Saigon.

Funny thing, but Y&H was supposed to serve as Anthony Bourdain's tour guide for this trip to Eamonn's A Dublin Chipper in Old Town, a segment that ultimately didn't make the cut for the recent D.C. episode of No Reservations. [Watch the deleted segment here.]

But by the time I was done showing Bourdain around the Eden Center and Abay Market, the host was toast, and I had to catch a ride to New York. After we had eaten as much raw beef as we could handle at Abay — or as little in Bourdain's case, since he wasn't a fan — the lead producer called me outside and said I was free to go. Tony was still wiped from the previous day's shoot, the producer told me, and needed to get some shut-eye before heading to Eamonn's. I have to admit, Bourdain did look pretty rough as he slouched his way outside and smoked a cigarette, a New York punk who still enjoyed a good bender a half century into life.

Regardless, my first reaction was to feel the sting of rejection. You see, the producers had put together a tight, ambitious schedule for the day, in which we would eat, drink, talk, and travel around Northern Virginia from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., hitting the Eden Center, Abay, and Eamonn's. I was to play Bourdain's monkey boy all day long—until, that is, Dr. Feelgood got pooped and needed to take nappy-poo.

I should have viewed this as a gift from the producer, who knew I was stressing to make it to NYC before every decent restaurant closed for the night. But I didn't. Somehow I twisted it into a rejection.

This is how TV producers handle it when they want to ease you out of the picture, I thought. I had failed Bourdain somehow, so they were creating this bullshit Tony-needs-a-rest ruse so they could continue on without me!

Sometimes, I have to admit, I bore myself with my self-obsession.

But it's the truth. It's how I viewed it back in July when we filmed the segment. Since the show debuted in January, just before the inauguration, I have received a lot of feedback on my minor role, much of it positive, some of it violently critical—to the point where at least two people wrote online that they wanted to punch me in the face. (Rule No. 1 about being in the public eye: Don't Google your name.)  I got a strong taste of how personally people take Bourdain's perspective on their corner of the culinary world—and how little they understand how such shows are put together.

I hadn't thought much about that day last July, at least not until I got an e-mail today from Meshelle Armstrong, wife of chef Cathal, the dynamic duo behind Eamonn's, The Majestic, and Restaurant Eve. She was sending around the link to the deleted Eamonn's segment (which apparently aired in the European and Asians editions of No Rez).

As I watched it, I felt some relief that I didn't serve as tour guide there. First off, Bourdain didn't need me. Cathal Armstrong can explain the place better than anyone (though I hope to God I could have concocted a better simile than saying Guinness tastes like "angels pissing on your tongue"). Second, it looked like Eamonn's was stocked with ringers, including a fiddle player straight from Central Casting. It didn't look like the semi-humble neighborhood chipper I knew it as.

Then again, maybe Bourdain could have used my help after all. I definitely would have saved him some embarrassment. I would prevented him from pronouncing Cathal's name, "CATH-al."

Photo by Jared Andrukanis/Zero Point Zero Productions

When the Lai family decided to close its signature restaurant, Huong Que/Four Sisters, in the Eden Center this year and move to the more mainstream environs of Merrifield, it left a rather gaping hole at the Vietnamese shopping center in Falls Church. The store fronts that face the parking lot at the Eden Center are coveted positions, the kind of places that businesses located inside the grungy center would kill for (or at least maim for). Fortunately for the Lai clan, they still controlled the lease on the Huong Que space, and they knew exactly what they wanted to do with it: shift their cramped deli, Song Que, into the significantly larger spot.

The new and improved Song Que opened earlier this month in the old Four Sisters space, and it is, in a word, magnificent. It's larger (naturally), which makes it easier to move around in without bumping into your fellow customers, but it's also easier on the eye. There are some gorgeous, illuminated pictures of Vietnam placed discreetly over the dry-goods shelves. The place is also more user-friendly; there's a sit-down eating area, where you can take your banh mi or bubble tea or Vietnamese dessert and quietly enjoy them while watching flatscreen TVs flicker more gorgeous imagery from the Vietnamese countryside.

Thuan Lai, the youngest son of Kim Lai and Thanh Tran, is now the manager of Song Que, and he and him mom, Thanh Tran (pictured above), have a few ideas on how to expand the menu that has served the deli so well. They're planning to put in a grill to start serving dishes like lemongrass beef over jasmine rice; they're also planning to expand their line of Vietnamese ice creams, among other sweet treats.

Huong Que used to a destination place at Eden Center; now, I'd say, it's Song Que.