[Editor’s note: Matt Eversman is slated to open his own restaurant in 2012.]
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I’m wasn’t crazy about the banh mi at the market—I’ve been spoiled by Nhu Lan Bakery. So I yawned when I heard about this place, where Eversman’s intentions are announced on a low cabinet displaying Andrea Nguyen’s fundamentalist Into the Vietnamese Kitchen next to David Chang’s heretical Momofuku. (Don’t ask me what the New York Times Cookbook is doing beside them.) But if Eversman—who externed at Trotter’s and was a line cook at May Street Market before turning up here—actually studied those books, it makes perfect sense that he’d come up with something as audacious as grilled confit octopus clinging to a stretch of rice dyed black with cuttlefish ink. Adorned with thin slices of watermelon radish, it’s a weird and delicious dish, as much like a Spanish arroz negro as a regular Vietnamese lunch.
It’s built on the broken rice (com tam) that’s employed in the working-class spots ubiquitous in any Vietnamese city. These cheaper, supposedly ignoble grains have shattered in processing, and when cooked they’re more clumpy and absorbent than when whole. Eversman puts them put to good use in a number of dishes, including a bowl filled with batons of extra-firm tofu bathed in a sauce of butter, shallots, black pepper, and ginger that leaves a lingering, warm finish. In another the rice is blanketed with strips of thick pork belly, shredded brussels sprouts, and a perfectly wobbly “5:10” egg (the menu’s first obvious nod to Chang, it refers to the ideal time for soft-boiling an egg).
Saigon Sisters 567 W. Lake 312-496-0090
saigonsisters.com/restaurant
