My parents love Vietnamese food, and as you know, there aren’t a lot of “fine dining” Vietnamese restaurants out there to go for a special occasion. Well, I suppose there’s S Vietnamese Fine Dining restaurant next to Westminster Mall. But the thing is, Vietnamese food is delicious yet simple; so to make it fancy is kinda like “Americanizing” it a little. True authentic Vietnamese food should be eaten at restaurants like My Vi Mi Gia, Hau Giang, or Pho places. But I can’t take my parents out to a hole-in-a-wall for Father’s Day so we all decided to go to Brodard Chateau, a more upscale Vietnamese fine dining restaurant in Garden Grove.
Brodard Chateau has the kind of service you’d get at 5-star restaurants. Maybe not as professional and well-trained, but it’s quite up there, with hosts leading you to your table (something you rarely get at typical Asian restaurants), waiters in uniform, bringing you water while you skim the menu, etc. Its interior design is modern and trendy looking and it is, of course, very clean, which is very important to us.
Brodard is known for their spring rolls – pork and shrimp paste rolled in rice paper with veggies. They have another restaurant a few miles away and the rolls are much cheaper there. Adding in the word “Chateau” at a second location means adding a few more bucks to the menu items.
Since my mom is a full-on vegetarian, we ordered veggie spring rolls for her, which consisted of soy paste, cucumber and asparagus. They were nicely cut in these cute little pieces like sushi.
She also had vegetarian banh khot, or tiny pancakes shaped like cupcakes, fried till golden brown on the outside but soft on the inside topped with soy shrimp. They weren’t as crispy as my mom would’ve liked. (Hmm I should try real banh khot one of these days. :))
My stuffed clams appetizer was interesting. Clams were mixed with ground pork, mushrooms, and tiny glass noodles, then baked on a big clam shell. Served with sweet spicy fish sauce.
Another dish we had was pan fried rice noodle topped with seafood and veggies. It seems this is all we order as this wasn’t our first time dining here. The trick is to keep the rice noodle crispy but it’s tough because of all the drizzled sauce on it. So you have to eat it almost immediately before it gets soggy. Overall, the dish was decent.
Since it was Father’s Day, the restaurant was a bit busy so we had to wait a while for our waiter to come out to bring us water and take our order. It was so busy they couldn’t let us keep the menu AND our waiter came around and asked if she could take an empty chair from our table. Yeahhh…
Brodard Chateau
9100 Trask Ave.
Garden Grove, CA 92844
(714) 899-8273
hungry tummie 