For many years Mollie and I have been fans of Mai Lee, a Vietnamese restaurant in Brentwood. It is owned and run by Lee Tran. Her son is now and adult and married a person of Japanese decent. Thus, the Vietnamese and Japanese fusion restaurant of Nudo House was born.
This is good for us because I really like pho (the Vietnamese soup with the clear broth and rice noodles). Mike and Anna prefer ramen (the Japanese soup with egg ramen noodles and a more milky broth).
We tried a bunch of different things on this trip. I ordered the papaya salad. I LOVED it. Hint: mix it up before eating. It is shredded papaya and carrots with some cucumber in it. There is a few bits of pork about 1/2 way down. There are peanuts about 3/4 of the way down and the citrus sauce/dressing at the bottom is the best! Mix it up and enjoy the peanuts and dressing all over it all. I could eat this often!
Next we also had spring rolls. Mike had pork and I had shrimp. They were good, but they were typical spring rolls served with a thicker tamarind sauce with peanuts on top of it. Just an FYI...Anna and I were watching a show about Asia the other day and we learned that what Americans call "Spring Rolls" are actually "Summer Rolls" because they are cold and meant to be eaten in the summer. True "Spring Rolls" are the small fried rolls. They are different from "Egg Rolls" which are fatter and contain a lot of cabbage...and are more Chinese.
We also tried the tamarind fried chicken. I had read online that this was good. It was good. It had some kind of sweetness in the breading. It was also dotted with fried shallots and green onion. It was a nice appetizer.
Anna ordered Classic Nudo Ramen with pork. She said it was really good. The bowl had a nice amount of pork, plus the extras you get with ramen...like egg, green onion, sesame seeds, bamboo shoots, and seaweed.
Mike didn't know if he would like all that "stuff" in his ramen, so he ordered "Kid's Ramen" that just had noodles, chicken and broth. I think he regretted it. His broth was rather lackluster and his pieces of dark meat chicken were rather bland.
I like pho. In pho it is all about the broth. Nudo house does a really good job with their pho broth. I know this sounds "foodie" and somewhat snobby, but I find their broth to be "complex." It just really has a lot of tastes and smells in it. You can tell they have boiled a whole bunch of things and then strained it off to a clear broth. I could smell meat and vegetables and warm spices like cinnamon or nutmeg. It was a broth that had the umami taste of protein with an ever so sweet finish. It was super yummy. I had them add shrimp. It comes with the customary plate of cilantro, mint, bean sprouts, raw jalepenos and fresh lime. I add all of that except the mint. I also add siracha. It was a nice sized bowl and I didn't know if I'd finish it after eating my entire papaya salad...but I was able to stuff it down!!
This is a popular place...when we left at about 7 p.m. on a Friday night, there was a line that stretched outside (probably 15 people). They also do a booming take out business. I would totally recommend trying this. It was good.
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