Kau Ba offers a unique experience within Vietnamese cuisine. For starters, I’d say it’s not the place to go for a feast, and it’s not the place I’d go for dinner. It fits that space of an upscale lunch. Meeting for business over the midday meal, looking for a fair bit of complexity? Go to Kau Ba. Formed through Chef Nikki Tran’s Vietnamese heritage and affinity for robust southern fare, the kitchen features a highly expressive and stylized menu, even offering brunch at the appropriate times.
If you’re looking for something light and raw, I’d recommend the crudo (Yellowtail, raspberry nuoc mam, lime, mint, green peppercorn) or apple & ginger salmon (Salmon, spiced nuoc mam, apple, thai basil, roe). If you’re looking to get adventurous, I’d recommend the snails (cooked in Honey, lemongrass, garlic butter, basil) and the “F.O.B.” (a cute little boat filled with soft-shell crab and a side of viejun sauce). The best of the lunch boxes would be the nuoc mam caramel candied salmon, the tamarind & ginger nuoc mam fried salmon, grilled lemongrass pork belly or tofu kho (braised/stewed).
The street egg rolls and spring rolls are quite done up as well. The former blends sweet taro, fresh green leaf, umami pork belly, briny pickled veggies and their house nuoc mam fish sauce. The latter consists of smoked pork belly sausage, basil, rice noodles, mint, lettuce and comes with an eggy shrimp sauce. If you want a more contrasting and complex appetizer, choose the egg rolls, if you want a fresher and more herbal appetizer, go with the spring rolls. It’s not always common in the states for taro to be well utilized in a dish, so I partly enjoyed the street egg rolls for this reason as well.
Lastly, in the event that one does want to order a heavier meal, Grandma’s Subsidy would be a must try, a nourishing and homey dish of pork belly, anchovies, crispy rice, green onions, seaweed and sesame seeds. As one patron described it, “This dish was so simple and delicious. It gave me that nostalgic feeling like I was back in my grandmother’s kitchen as a child. It’s so worth getting!” Anything that takes someone back to their Vietnamese grandma’s kitchen as a child is literally recreating the end of the Disney classic Ratatouille. So yeah, it’s worth it.
All things considered, if you don’t wish to venture out and try new things, they have the usuals like pho, banh mi and the like. But I’d definitely encourage testing out the more creative flavor profiles.
If you do happen to be going for lunch and have a lot more to do in the day, sharing the F.O.B. and snails, with a personal order of tofu kho is a solid choice overall. Soft shell crabs are low mercury, relatively light, and packed with protein, omega 3, vitamin B6 & B12m, E & K, riboflavin, folate, niacin, and thiamin, iron, calcium, magnesium, copper, selenium, potassium, zinc and phosphorus. The snails will add in some additional protein, iron, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin A, while being quite low in fat. The tofu kho is well braised with a nice salad and jasmine rice added on the side.
