Ha Long Vietnamese Cuisine - Irvine

It's said that when you have a sore throat, you're not supposed to eat fried foods; you're supposed to have soup. But what if the fried food is in the soup? Does that somehow make it all okay?

Ha Long Vietnamese Cuisine makes this noodle soup that has every protein in it deep fried. The char siu pork is deep fried. The breaded shrimp is deep fried. Even the hunk of chicken, which the menu says is baked, is deep fried.

And if that weren't enough, a round of crispy wonton skin is included, and yep: deep fried.

When I ordered it for take-out because I was feeling under the weather, I got the dish in three components: a vat of soup; a plastic baggie of bean sprouts, cilantro and sliced jalapenos; and a bowl with the noodles, veggies and protein.



I put it together and tucked into it hunched over my coffee table with chopsticks, slurping it all in. Every crunch of deep-fried something I ate, I answered with a big swig of that sweet/savory yellow broth and a wad of chewy egg noodles. And when I discovered that they also included a thimble of chile paste in oil, I spackled everything I ate with it.

As for my sore throat, it went away an hour after that feast, replaced with a tingling burn from the chile and the kind of satisfaction that's only possible through the consumption of deep fried food or noodle soup. In this case, both.

Ha Long Vietnamese Cuisine
Crossroads, 3850 Barranca Pkwy
Irvine, CA 92606
(949) 654-3736
http://halongcuisine.com/

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