By any reasonable measure, Sochi Saigonese Kitchen’s first year has been a success.
Over the past few months, co-owners and partners Chinh Pham and Son Do have picked up awards from Michelin (a Bib Gourmand) and Jean Banchet (for best heritage restaurant). Chicago Magazine crowned it the fourth-best new restaurant of the year.
That’s not bad for a couple who had never run a restaurant before. Born in Vietnam, they both studied finance at a college in Australia, before returning home to work for Do’s family business. “I was a purchasing manager, keeping track of the inventory,” Chinh Pham said. “But it was always our dream to open a restaurant.”
But as Pham relates over the phone, success was not guaranteed. “We had a really tight budget,” she said. “We are immigrants, so we had to do everything on our own to try to minimize the costs.”
The week they opened the Lakeview neighborhood restaurant, they had $150 in the company account, making her incredibly nervous, Pham said.
“I knew I had to pay the employees and pay for the alcohol and the food,” she said. “I wondered how I could survive. I was so lucky.”
It’s also clear that Pham and Do don’t leave much to luck. Instead, the couple are hyperfocused on every detail of the restaurant, from the plates, most of which are imported from Vietnam, to the recipes.
Take the original egg rolls, called gh? gio in Vietnamese. Unlike most egg rolls in Chicago that are rolled in a wheat-based wrapper, these feature a thin rice paper that blisters unevenly when it meets the hot oil, leaving the crusts splattered with patches of dark brown and golden yellow. An order of four egg rolls also comes with pristine leaves of Boston lettuce, fresh basil, pickled daikon and carrot, and a sauce that balances sweetness with a spicy sourness.
Take one of the rolls, wrap it up in lettuce, with herbs and pickles and dip. Each bite leads you through so many different flavors and textures that it’s almost hilarious to list them all here, but here are 12 in alphabetical order: aromatic, crackly, crunchy, funky, juicy, meaty, plump, salty, spicy, sour, sweet, supple. While I’m sure there’s more, what’s so captivating is that none overwhelms the other.
Sochi isn’t the only Vietnamese restaurant in town serving these rice paper-wrapped delights, but nowhere else are all the elements so precisely assembled. The restaurant is filled with these small revelations. It’s not a restaurant that wallops you on the head with heat or heft. Instead, you’ll walk away thinking about the tiny details, like how the spring rolls come with a peanut-based sauce that trades overt sweetness for a captivating funk. Or how each slice of meat in the seared duck salad is so stunningly tender, allowing you to appreciate the crunchy crab chips and surprisingly delicate fish sauce dressing.
Asked how she figures out the right balance of ingredients, Pham is honest. “We do it exactly how we eat at home,” she said. “When I eat a dish, it has to follow my taste preference. I have to make it exactly.”
The banh mi, available only for lunch, takes exactness to a whole new level. Chicago has its fair share of satisfying banh mi sandwiches, but none where all the elements — pork belly, pate, pork loaf, scallion, cilantro, radish, cucumber, mayonnaise, chili paste, maggi sauce — are so exactly layered. From beginning to end, you’ll experience all the elements with each bite.
The main dishes aren’t as consistently captivating as the starters, but there are some highlights. The Slap Mama crab fried rice features plump pieces of sweet crab. It’s also cooked in such a way that each kernel of rice is optimally flavored and not the least bit greasy. The dish is also simply gorgeous, thanks to a topping of bright red masago, a variety of fish roe.
The chili salt chicken is an expertly cooked half-chicken, with an appropriately salty and slightly spicy crust. Too bad it’s also paired with those starch-crusted fries, which always remind me of Burger King. Of course, had my fellow food critic, Louisa Chu, penned this review, she would probably have raved about them, because she loves these kinds of fries. (Like ketchup on hot dogs, it’s often the subject of our critic-on-critic debates.) Sorry, Sochi. Just luck of the draw.
Sochi’s menu is minuscule compared with most Vietnamese restaurants in Chicago, but it’s hard not to want it even more laser-focused. Pham said they included pho, the brothy beef and rice noodle soup, on the menu mostly because their customers assume Vietnamese restaurants always serve the dish. Their version features a genuinely savory broth with thin slices of brisket, but it lacks the captivating complexity and myriad topping choices you’d find at a place like Pho 5 Lua (6261 N. McCormick Blvd.). It’s still a satisfying bowl, but you can tell the kitchen’s heart is elsewhere.
The only real dud here is the cocktail menu. Both the Saigon Sling and Crazy Strawberry were so unbalanced, I couldn’t finish either. The small wine and beer list is probably the best bet.
The dessert menu lists four options, but both times I visited, only the cheesecake was available. This turned out not to be an issue. The family recipe is delicate and creamy, making it an ideal ending to any meal.
Captivating but never brash, Sochi specializes in dishes that subtly get under your skin. My only regret is that it took me a year to visit.
Sochi Saigonese Kitchen
1358 W. Belmont Ave.
773-904-8511
Tribune rating: Two stars, very good
Open: Wednesday to Saturday. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner 4-8 p.m.
Prices: Starters, $10 to $18; main dishes, $18 to $32
Noise: Conversation friendly
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible, with bathrooms on first floor
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.