The seafood selections are intriguing, but this Vietnamese restaurant in Chandler founders on muted flavors and flip preparations.
by Nikki Buchanan | Photography by Jill Mcnamara
Goc Saigon, the Vietnamese restaurant that took over the former Max Saigon space in Chandler last summer, is not a seafood restaurant per se, but it pulls together a few dishes you’re unlikely to find in one single place anywhere else in town – namely, oysters, sea snails, scallops and frog legs.
Sounds promising, right? Yet halfway into my meal, I find myself wondering if Goc’s renditions of classic Vietnamese seafood are true representations of the genre or merely pale imitations. I’m guessing the latter. King-size oysters, for example, served on the half shell with a sprinkling of green onions and peanuts, are unappetizingly mushy and devoid of oceanic complexity.
And surely, sò diêp phô mai (scallops broiled with mild Laughing Cow cheese and topped with fish roe), should be better than this insipid version. The scallops (half of them stuck to their shells) taste uniformly sweet, the cheese sauce so bland it’s almost indistinguishable.
Sea snails, bathed in various sauces, are beer-drinking food in Vietnam. The version we try (ôc huong trung muôi) pairs pleasantly chewy snails with a sauce of salted egg yolk – sweet and salty at once. Decent enough, but would I blithely toss them back by the dozen? Probably not.
Crunchy frog legs, dredged through garlic-butter sauce, are far and away the best part of the meal, followed closely by Com Tam Goc Saigon, a traditional combo plate of broken rice; grilled lemongrass pork chop; cha trung (steamed pork and egg meatloaf); dense, sweet sausages; and diamond shrimp (salty, delicious planks of shrimp paste wrapped in crispy tofu skin).
A stir fry of springy egg noodles, veggies, shrimp, scallops, squid and imitation crab falls into “decent, but hardly memorable” territory. Before rendering a final verdict, I go back for bun thit nuong cha gio, a cold vermicelli salad I enjoy often at Banh Mi Bistro in Phoenix for $12. Sadly, it’s an $15.50 travesty here: mushy noodles (still hot from the pot), dry pork, a falling-apart egg roll and anemic fish sauce. If the kitchen can’t get that old standby right, I’m guessing many of those hard-to-find specialties aren’t up to par, either. I know they’re not working for me.
Goc Saigon
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Contact: 1018 N. Arizona Ave., Chandler, 480-722-1668
Hours: Tu-Su, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
Highlights: Frog legs ($12.99); Com Tam Goc Saigon ($14.99)
