Cheap Eats 2011: Quan Chuc

It is very odd, this relatively swank Vietnamese restaurant around the corner from Food4Less, all bamboo plywood, faux temple doors and big orange lamps like bioluminescent jellyfish. It seats 50, but is often empty. The menu has fancy pretensions (quail in tamarind, $10.50), but the tea came lukewarm. Still, that quail was quite good, with three half birds marinated in palm sugar and tamarind and fried brown. There is great joy to be found in picking tiny bones out of one’s teeth. Also excellent is the catfish clay pot ($10.50), a pound or so of fried and poached fish in a sweet, tangy sauce. It looks small, but it will easily make two meals. A turmeric noodle soup ($7.95) with pork ball and shrimp was also good, but could have benefitted from more broth and fewer noodles.