The Ba Bay Team: Khoa Nguyen, Sara Siegel, Nick Sharpe, and Denise Nguyen. You've likely heard about the new Vietnamese restaurant taking over the former Locanda space on Capitol Hill. But maybe you haven't heard this: The forthcoming Ba Bay will feature Nick Sharpe in the kitchen. For those who need a fast refresher, Sharpe [...]

Unlike Four Sisters, Fall Church’s other perennial favorite for Vietnamese cooking, Present enjoyed a meteoric rise almost from the day it opened. Yours truly contributed to the hype last year, when I called it, without much hesitation, the “area’s best Vietnamese restaurant.” Like others who’ve visited Present since its initial rush of positive press, I’ve [...]

From Wheaton to Falls Church, I’ve tried countless bowls of pho looking for one with the depth and pure heady aroma of Pho 75’s. I have yet to find one, which is why when I need a fix of this Vietnamese noodle soup, I continue to roll right into Hyattsville. I can’t vouch for the [...]

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.

The firefighter-yellow banner to the left of the entrance tells you the restaurant is called Mi La Cay Noodle House, a name echoed by the neon lights above the short set of stairs leading to the place. But then you look to the right (see pic below) and notice another sign hovering over the establishment. It reads: Song Phat Noodle [...]

Maybe this trend has been around awhile and I've just overlooked it, but this weekend while I was tooling around Wheaton, I found not one but two restaurants that mix Latin and Vietnamese food. Technically this isn't fusion fusion, in that these establishments aren't combining ingredients from the two cuisines into something unique. It's more like [...]

Near the bottom of the menu that hovers over the cash register at Toan, there's a small-but-telling sentence. It states that the Silver Spring noodle house does not use MSG in its soups. To say I was startled would be an understatement. "You really don't use MSG?" I asked the young man behind the counter. When he said [...]

Forget hamburgers for a moment. Here's a beef dish you can believe in, even at a place like Lotus Cafe, which casts a wider net than your average tuna fisherman. Seriously, a Vietnamese restaurant that serves calamari fries, coconut shrimp, and a Sex on the Beach cocktail?  Is this place channeling Saigon or Cancun?

For those who have pawed through Y&H's 2009 Dining Guide, you know that I'm a serious fan of Present, a Vietnamese restaurant unlike any other in the area. Y&H, of course, is just one of a number of media sources beating the drum for Present. But what do eaters who don't get paid to chew [...]

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. If you haven’t [...]