Beefing Up the Menu

IRVINE — Until recently, most of Southern California’s authentic Asian restaurants have been confined to the big city or to heavily Asian suburbs such as Monterey Park, Westminster and Rowland Heights. A visit to Tai Nam in Heritage Square shows that the pattern is being broken--and how far things have to go.

Tai Nam, which bills both Vietnamese and French cuisine, is small but genteel. You enter through a foyer furnished with cushy rattan lounge chairs and catch sight of a golden bust of a smiling Buddha on your way to the dining area, which is painted soft gray. There, on black banquettes or bamboo chairs with black metal frames, you dine at tables set with flowers in Art Deco vases.

For exotic color, there are soft-color photos of Southeast Asian life and Chinese stringed instruments on the wall. Dozens of tropical plants give the place a rain-forest atmosphere. Close inspection reveals that these plants are artificial--an odd metaphor for a few of the restaurant’s dishes.

The menu is like what you’d find in Little Saigon, with a few notable differences. First, it includes steaks--in itself not a huge departure for the beef-loving Vietnamese, but these have distinctly European toppings: mushroom sauce or butter and garlic.

And then there are what the menu calls baked dishes, half a dozen gratin-style dishes: chicken filet, seafood and various other choices baked in unspeakably thick layers of gooey, insipid cheese sauce.

Most of Tai Nam’s Vietnamese dishes, however, are unimpeachable, even if they cost slightly more than in Little Saigon. A case in point: cha gio, Vietnamese spring rolls.

In Little Saigon, you’d get about eight of these bite-sized rolls stuffed with a mixture of pork, crab, mushrooms and bean-thread noodles, for around $3.50, plus a salad-like garnish of lettuce, cucumber, basil and mint.

Here, you get four dense, delicious cylinders, every bit as good as any I’ve tasted in Little Saigon, but they’re $4.95, and there’s no basil on the salad plate. Oh well, you’ll save money on gas if you live around here.

The highest marks go to goi cuon, two rice-paper rolls filled with fresh shrimp, vermicelli noodles and fresh herbs. Nearby on the menu are similar rolls stuffed with charbroiled pork or beef. All are wonderfully light and zesty, especially when you dip them in the sweet and pungent red sauce served on the side.

The soup and salad section of the menu also has its moments. A mildly unctuous cream of asparagus soup is buoyed by the intensity of the asparagus flavor. French onion soup, a beefy broth topped with a homemade crouton, has a nice, bubbly cheese crust (the most judicious use of cheese at Tai Nam). Shrimp salad is a mound of finely shredded cabbage and carrot, with a sweet vinaigrette dressing, a few shrimp and a sprinkle of crushed peanut. (Substitute chicken for the shrimp and voila--Vietnamese chicken salad.)

I’ve already implied that you should avoid the baked dishes. I wouldn’t say that about the steaks, which are very reasonably priced filet mignons. They come either with garlic butter sauce--the fried garlic ends up as an unusual but appealing crisp cake--or a fine mushroom sauce.

I ordered my steak rare, and I had the gravest fear that it wouldn’t come that way, after the waiter told me repeatedly that the chef wanted me to have my steak medium, but it arrived at the table exactly as I requested.

Rice plates are solidly dependable. Hai Nam-style chicken rice, for instance: a clump of oily steamed rice topped with steamed chicken in garlic sauce.

Some of them may seem a little odd. As in Little Saigon, “roast” chicken with fried rice means a chicken that has indeed been roasted in the oven, but it gets finished in a deep fryer, so be warned. Tai Nam’s chicken Marengo with fried rice is nothing Napoleon Bonaparte would recognize--it’s a roasted half chicken slathered with gravy, bits of ham, a few peas and some diced carrot.

Of course there are noodle dishes, the mainstay of most Vietnamese restaurants. The best is probably satay beef chow fun: rice noodles sauteed with egg, bean sprouts and tender pieces of steak aromatic with Chinese five spices. Seafood chow mein, made with squid, fish and shrimp, is done Hong Kong-style, with the noodles clumped together into a crunchy cake. One flaw: The dish is far too oily.

Rice noodle vermicelli are served cold in large bowls with a variety of toppings. The most popular version comes with a few pieces of charbroiled pork and some spring rolls on top, plus a handful of crushed peanuts.

There isn’t much in the way of dessert here, apart from a workmanlike flan, unless you are a fan of beans in iced coconut milk, which is favored by Tai Nam’s predominantly Asian clientele.

As an alternative, consider the fresh fruit and vegetable juices (carrot, young coconut, occasionally watermelon) or the tremendously refreshing fruit milk shakes called sinh to, in tropical flavors including durian, soursoup and papaya.

Finish off with French filtered coffee with condensed milk, a cultural hybrid that works no matter whether you’re in Paris or Ho Chi Minh City, Westminster or Irvine.

Tai Nam is moderately priced. Appetizers are $2.95 to $8.95. Steaks are $10.95 to $12.95. Noodle dishes are $5.50 to $7.95.

* TAI NAM

* 14120 Culver Drive, Suite A, Irvine.

* (714) 262-1129.

* Open 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. daily, except Tuesday.

* Visa and MasterCard.