French Vietnamese Fusion

On an amazing spring night in Atlanta, Cashew and I went to Com Dunwoody, a restaurant in - you guessed it - Dunwoody. She had been there before and raved for the lamb they serve. She also mentioned that it wasn't traditional Vietnamese food, but it had a French influence. I have to admit, I am not used to hearing about lamb or French influence in any Asian cuisine. However, I trust Cashew's opinion on food, so I couldn't wait to try this place.

I guess the good weather made the night seem festive, so Cashew and I decided to order drinks. Our waiter scared us when he said that the mango mojito was really sweet, but Cashew decided to try it anyway. It wasn't sweet, just very minty and perfect. I opted out for a refreshing Pegu which contained gin, lime juice and contreau. This time the waiter warned us that it was sweet. Well, he was right here... I felt tipsy after a few sips and couldn't wait to get my food.

For appetizers, we shared a Crabcake (half of it pictured here) and the Com Goi salad with beef that contained a bunch of sliced goodies: green mango, cucumbers, papaya, apple. The crabcake was very crabby (a good thing!), and the salad was very fresh. I loved both of them.

Our entree was the Banh Hoi with the lamb I had heard so much about it. I need to go on a little tangent here. I ate tons and tons of lamb in Bulgaria. I considered lamb to be a very tender and moist. I tried lamb a few times in the US, and I hated it! The biggest reason was that lamb here had a smell that it didn't have in Bulgaria. I don't know if it's because it's not as fresh, but it also tasted different. So eventually I stopped ordering lamb here.

Despite all of this, I agreed to try the lamb at Com because Cashew praised it so much. Well, it didn't taste lamby at all! Clarification, it didn't have the taste of US lamb, so I was happy. In addition to lamb, the dish came with noodle "pancake" under the lamb, a lot of the grated things found in the Com Goi salad, lettuce, cilantro, basil and mint. One thing that was kind of ridiculous was that the dish didn't come with any rice paper that's REQUIRED for making the wraps, and you had to ORDER it separately. They also brought a bowl of hot water for the rice paper. So once we had everything, we dipped the rice paper in the water to soften it, added a little bit of everything on top of it, and made our own spring roll-type wrap. Delicious! Now I want to buy my own rice paper, so I can wrap whatever I want in it :)