Hansan offers fresh, fragrant food that's easy on the wallet. Photo / Jason Dorday
Herald Rating: * * * 1/2
Address: 55 Nuffield St, Newmarket
Ph: (09) 523 3988
Ambience: Bustling
Vegetarians: May have to negotiate.
Watch out for: The crowds
Bottom line: Cheap and moderately cheerful.
Though I once spent three weeks in Vietnam, I did not develop a very sophisticated appreciation of the cuisine. Travelling alone, I tended to eat at crowded places that didn't have menus (you point at what someone else is eating).
In some, there wasn't even a roof - you sit
on a plastic stool next to a street trader cooking on a gas flame - and I had a lot of pho, a noodle broth with sliced beef enlivened with lime and beansprouts, which is more or less the national dish.
All this is by way of saying that I don't know much about Vietnamese food, but I know what I like. The spicing is more subtle and the food is finer, more delicate and fragrant than Thai. But it's also harder to find, at least in New Zealand.
There seems to be a Thai restaurant in every suburb and provincial town and there is a huge range of places from food hall to fine dining. Local Vietnamese restaurants, by contrast, seem stuck in a formica and slightly greasy-spoon time warp. There is not, to my knowledge (and I'd be delighted to be contradicted) a classy, fusion place in Auckland like the fabled Cochin in Sydney's Darlinghurst.
Hansan is not likely to change that. It's one of a trio - the others are in Panmure and Glenfield - and it bears saying at the outset that it's very popular. The man who took my phone call seemed mystified that I was wanting to book, but I'm glad I did. The place was packed by 7pm on a Tuesday with groups of Asian youngsters, student - or otherwise indigent - couples and a businessman in an expensive cashmere coat, dining alone.
I was there with a group of mates who meet monthly or so to compare notes on the joys and tribulations of modern living, so the conversation was scintillating. One emailed the next day to compliment me on matching the sauvignon blanc to the spring rolls but I think he was taking the mickey. The wine list is short enough to be called brusque - as I recall there was a single savvy on it - but the place does BYO.
As we made short work of spring rolls - and the cold, crunchy Vietnamese variant, the summer roll, with its translucent wrapping and its shredded pork and lettuce filling - we looked over the menu. It is one of those pictorial ones that allows you to avoid reading dozens of descriptions of dishes that vary only fractionally from each other and if Pan Fried Pork with Lemon grass & Rice Noodles Soup is too much of a mouthful, you can say P22 - or point, as in Vietnam.
As to how authentically Vietnamese it is, I am not sure. One wall is dominated by a Chinese hanging, the other by a photograph from Angkor Wat which is in Cambodia, and the presence of Hainanese chicken, Yangchow fried rice and wonton soup on the menu raises some suspicion. But it's fresh and fragrant and most dishes on a meat-heavy menu are full of veges too.
Better still, it's as cheap as chips and if the service is slack - we had to ask for tea refills and implore them to clear away after 20 minutes of talking over a pile of dirty dishes - you get what you pay for. I just can't help thinking of Cochin.
