Street of Dreams

12th Avenue presents two ways to sample the city’s best Vietnamese

On a gray Seattle winter day, the line moves fast inside Seattle Deli, the brightly lit Vietnamese take-out on 12th Avenue and Washington Street in Little Saigon. Banh mi sandwiches pass like batons over the counter for a scant $2.75. Seattle Deli’s standout dish is a plastic “lunch box” of bun thit nuong—layers of bbq pork, vermicelli rice noodles, lettuce and basil that fly off a stack by the cash register for $4.50. Each is a perfect vehicle for the Vietnamese sugar-lime-peanut-cilantro-fish sauce flavor matrix.

A clean-cut, busy-looking guy hunches next to the window with his foot against the wall, chop-sticking noodles into his mouth. Dining indoors is not allowed, but the deli is slammed and the workers behind the counter don’t stop him. He finishes quickly and is gone.

A half-mile north on 12th, past a handful of Ethiopian restaurants—where Little Saigon blends into the Central District and becomes Capitol Hill—a woman stands with a cocktail at Ba Bar, the chic, spacious Vietnamese “street food & drink” restaurant that opened in July. She dissects and critiques her meal to her friends, who nod and squint while chewing. One of her pals asks the bartender if the small bag he’s using to crush ice is a special item imported from Vietnam. (It is not).

Twelfth Avenue is an artery rich in ethnic food. Swooping from Beacon Hill to Capitol Hill, it offers a kaleidoscope of Filipino, Latin, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, French and Thai restaurants. On the southern end, people buy cheap Vietnamese vermicelli and wolf it down. On the other, connoisseurs take their time and get analytical. At Seattle Deli, a lunch of vermicelli and an iced Vietnamese coffee is $6.50. At Ba Bar, it’s $15.00.

Seattle Deli has the best to-go vermicelli in Little Saigon because it comes with fried onions on top and extra basil and lettuce underneath. The dish is elemental and hard to mess up—the ingredients ensure enticing combinations like crunchy and soft, meaty and tangy. Seattle Deli makes it more filling with surplus roughage and its calling-card onions: candy bits that add flavor and texture. Each time your tooth hits one, there’s a pleasantly surprising caramel stickiness. Adding a cup of gritty coffee sweetened by condensed milk makes for an excellent lunch.

The Vietnamese iced coffee at Ba Bar tastes the same as Seattle Deli’s. Ba Bar’s combo vermicelli, on the other hand, is a world away. Romaine instead of iceberg lettuce. More and better meats: chicken, pork, big shrimps and grass-fed beef. The fishier fish sauce carries an intriguing complexity. The crunched-up peanuts taste discernibly toasted. And there’s a visual hit to the whole thing—bright julienned carrots next to sliced, green cucumbers. The scent of burning, sugary meat first appears on the sidewalk outside, and seeing that fire in the dish is exciting: the browned shell of the shrimp; the blackened marks on the chicken. Everything about the bowl is more well-considered.

Ba Bar feels like a neighborhood restaurant crossed with a living room. Its breezeway—essentially an espresso stand unto itself—opens into a brown-black wood-accented room the size of a dance club, but with the cozy feel of a library or furniture store. If that sounds weird, it’s not. Summer’s clientele of trend-tourists has in recent months mellowed into a reformed-bohemian vibe. Ba Bar has settled into its identity. It serves breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night food, and with Sam Cooke playing on the speakers—why not stay all day with a book?

Seattle Deli is all about efficiency and convenience. Ordering is the beginning and end of the deal. Grab your food and eat it back home, or in the office, or on the sidewalk next to the old woman selling cilantro out of a basket on the curb. Everyday-ness is part of the charm. Nothing exotic goes on here. The old woman outside is not a prop. This is simply what people do in Seattle, a very white but also very Asian city. There’s something elevating about that commonality, the fact that eating this delightful food is not a secret, but a way of life.

If an out-of-towner asked where all the hip music happens in Seattle, you’d point them to Pike/Pine on Capitol Hill or Ballard Avenue. If someone asked where all the good Vietnamese food is, you’d say 12th Avenue. But you’d also be wise to ask: Are you looking for good, cheap food or a dining experience? Though it’s tempting to pit different echelons against each other, there’s really no competition.

Photo by Nate Watters.