Incongruous Orlando occasionally rears its enigmatic head. A week passes without the opening of an omakase. An hour passes without a smashburger in your feed. You spot a tattoo-free caffeinator in Lineage, slurp pho beyond the bounds of Mills 50. Incongruous Orlando discombobulates. And pho-slurping? All about harmonizing that yin and yang.
Vietnamese cuisine is a balance of fives. At its most basic, five fundamental tastes dancing with five different appeals to the senses. At its least basic, it gets metaphysical — Buddha's involved. Our focus is the fulcrum on which this balance balances: taste-good and how it combines with serves-good and feels-good to strike winning symmetry in a restaurant. In this, Casselberry's An Vi Vietnamese Kitchen only somewhat succeeds.
The fuzzy focus and minor inconsistencies of this lowkey strip-maller seem born of build-it-as-you-fly-it. The sign outside reads "Vietnamese Food & Crawfish Cajun." It should read "Mostly Vietnamese Food, Some Cajun & No Crawfish."
There is another sign inside. It reads "Beer, the reason I wake up every afternoon." There is no beer. Or wine. So, yes, there are signs. And modified signs. Several menu items have been Sharpied-through, 86'ed. Prices changed. The wayfinding is clear in its lack of clarity: Welcome to a work in progress.
This work comes at the hands of friendly owners Joe and Rose Nguyen, who moved to Orlando from Seattle, leaving the restaurant Rainier Crawfish behind. It's no surprise the Cajun crossover options at An Vi feel honed. A fried catfish banh mi ($12.95) proved perfectly crisp and clean, gumbo ($14.95) a bowlful of soulful thanks to its deep and layered roux. But Cajun — or Thai or Chinese — food is not what brought us in the door.
Banh tom ($17.95) — fritters of crispy shell-on shrimp and matchsticked sweet potato — are a jumble of yessir when wrapped in lettuce and dipped in nuoc cham. Grilled beef in betel leaf ($18.95), a touch short on smoke and long on chew, delivered similar setup and satisfaction, and both crackle-crisp, fish-sauced chicken wings rounded with brown sugar and grilled pork skewers (both $10.95) have been consistent winners.
Sometimes, though, good has been offset by not-so good. On one occasion, the aromatic 48-hour broth in beef pho ($14.95) was let down by lifeless garnish. On another, a dull bun bo hue (spicy beef soup, $18.95) only sparked to life when introduced to a chili sauce heady with shrimp paste and lemongrass. Summer rolls ($6.95) elevated by silky-soft transparent wrappers were undercut by an overabundance of rice vermicelli innards. And so on. It's an undercurrent of imbalance that also manifests in unpredictable service.
On a recent evening we found An Vi empty. Despite our lonesomeness, it was 40 minutes before food found table. Forty-five before we saw plates. (That's a booze-free 45.) We think we interrupted an oddly timed family meal. A tablemate asked if the restaurant is pronounced "Ahn-Wee." We've found lunches more reliably restaurant-like. People are present and service flows more capably.
An Vi is a restaurant that, perhaps of necessity, runs with a wobble. And despite the fact we've enjoyed our meals, nothing stands out as hurry-back excellent. That's OK. Food does generally bob its head above the median. It is what it is — safe-bet satisfying in an area of town not known for its abundance of safe-bet Vietnamese. So, yes, if you find yourself twixt not-Mills strip malls and glimpse a sign for Viet Cajun, you are not experiencing a flash of divergent reality. It is reality. A small independent one. A capably tasty one. One worth spending some time in.
Location Details
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | or sign up for our RSS Feed
