Vietnamese Please

There are some great, cheap Asian restaurants near my office that I don't eat at nearly as often as I should.  That changed on Friday when we decided to run by Cha Pa's, a small Vietnamese place, for their lunch special.  For about $8.50 you can get a banh mi, pho, or noodle bowl with either a small salad or spring roll.  The deal got me in the door, but the food will keep me going back.

I went with the pork vermicelli bowl.  I'm a sucker for those thin rice noodles, but the crispy pork is what made it.  I will say the bowl was a bit dry, but once I poured some sauce over it, there was even more flavor and it was much easier to manipulate with my fork.  I'm not sure, but I think the sauce was there for the spring roll.  I'll probably never find out if you still get the sauce if you choose the salad because the spring roll was tiny but stuffed with a ton of juicy ground pork.  No boring shredded carrot filler here.

Vietnamese may not be the first cuisine that comes to mind when you're craving Asian, but they make dang good soups, sandwiches, and noodles...and everything else come to think of it.  If you've never tried it, I recommend dipping your toes in the Vietnamese pool at a place like Cha Pa's where you can try the basics at a great price for lunch.