If it wasn’t for visitors from out of town, I’d never get back to some of my favorite restaurants. That friend or family member arrives with a list of places they fondly recall from their last visit, or from the days when they lived here, and as they rediscover the place, I do too. Sometimes they give me a perspective on what has changed – they see the new items or shift in the menu all at once, while I experienced it in increments.
The latest example of this happened when my daughter was visiting from Seattle and chose to have an evening out at Little Sister in Redondo. She hadn’t been there in most of a decade, but was excited about again experiencing the adventurous pan-Asian fusion that was based on Vietnamese cuisine but included dishes from Singapore, Burma, and other points in Asia. I let her know that the place had changed concept, but I hadn’t been there myself for a few years, and we agreed that a fresh look was in order.
The environment was much as we remembered it, with none of the stereotypical Asian kitsch, though I think the cherry red 1960’s-style upholstered chairs are new. They’re more comfortable than the ones they replaced, so I’m not complaining. The menu was quite different from the one she remembered, and had evolved from the version of modern Vietnamese food that I experienced on previous visits.
Our party of four started by sharing appetizers of housemade chicken and shiitake dumplings and goi cuon spring rolls, the non-fried rice paper rolls that have entered the American culinary mainstream. The spring rolls here were close to what you might get in a traditional Vietnamese restaurant , served with pickled carrot and daikon slivers and fresh herbs on the side. However, traditional Vietnamese restaurants don’t include the sliver of fried wonton skin in the roll that gives each bite a bit of savory crunch, or have a sauce that has this much crispy garlic and chopped peanut. I liked that sauce so much that we asked the server not to clear it when that entrée was gone – surely something else would come along that I would want to dip in it. As it turned out, everything else came with enjoyable sauces or didn’t need them, so it wasn’t used.
The chicken and shiitake dumplings would have been served with mild nuoc mam fish sauce elsewhere, but here they were topped with roasted mushrooms and swimming in a broth that had a mild ginger flavor. Chili-vinegar dipping sauce was on the side, but I don’t think anyone in our party even touched it. Shiitake mushrooms have a distinctive flavor and texture that each soft dough packet was an experience to be savored just as they were.
We could easily have made a meal of more of the small plates, and planned to order a few more along with two large items – the black rice shrimp and the salt and pepper soft shell crab with curried seafood rice. When we started to place that order, our server let us know that the latter item was a large enough portion for two, something that really should be noted on the menu. We dropped our plan to get the garlic noodles, but had to try the pan-fried eggplant because one person at the table particularly enjoys that vegetable.
As it happened, the salt and pepper crab with seafood rice arrived first, and it was a very generous portion. It was served in a pan of the type used for paella, and resembled one so much that I asked our server why they didn’t refer to this dish as a Vietnamese paella. She acknowledged that this would be an accurate description, but explained that the Executive Chef did not want to use a term from another cuisine. I think that’s a mistake, because more people would probably order this if they knew what it is. The wide plate of saffron-tinged rice was topped with fried pieces of soft shell crab, scallops, clams, mussels, shavings of purple onion, crispy shallots fried in butter, and cilantro, with rings of seeded peppers providing a mild chili kick. This item can be ordered mild, medium, or spicy, and we picked mild in deference to the spice wimp at the table. It was a good call, and though I might have preferred medium, everyone enjoyed the variety of flavors. As with the previous items, spicier sauces were served on the side – chili sauce, something like a Peruvian aji Amarillo, and some marinated mango. This time I deployed the sauces on the big pieces of seafood, and enjoyed the gentle burn.
The black rice entree has a superficial resemblance to that crab dish, in that both contained rice, shrimp, mussels, and scallops, but there was a major difference in texture and flavor. Black rice is not just different in color from regular rice – it has a slightly chewy rather than fluffy texture, and a distinctive nutty flavor. It is often referred to as forbidden rice, allegedly because it was reserved for aristocrats. (Since it’s distinctive and has a very low crop yield that makes it expensive, that tale might even be true, though I have yet to see any citation for it.) In this dish it’s a lightly seasoned base for a mix of shrimp, scallops, baby octopus, mussels, ground pork in spicy sauce, sweet lop cheong Chinese sausage, fried okra, and both red and green chillies in a sauce that uses both lime leaves and fresh lime juice. A topping of crispy shallots and garlic with cilantro adds agreeably pungent herbal touches to a dish that has a lot going on. Two types of shrimp are used, small shrimp that are stir-fried and larger ones that have a bit of grill smokiness, and as you eat your way through this dish you’ll experience many different permutations of flavor.
The final item we tried, the pan-fried eggplant, was from the “For the Table” section, but really everything here should be for the table – Little Sister is a place to share flavors and discuss them. The eggplant was an excellent foil for the other two, the vegetable tossed with spicy pork, garlic, chili oil, and scallions in a sweet and spicy brown sauce. I don’t remember having anything quite like this in any other Vietnamese restaurant, but I will come back here to have it again. I might even need to bring a larger party so we can try more dishes – we ordered two appetizers, three entrees, and a side but departed with takeout boxes.
We tried two cocktails, the Golden Lotus of gin with sweet vermouth, strawberry, and lemon and the Hanoi Heatwave with tequila, golden falernum, blood orange, and peppercorn. Vietnamese food is tough to pair wine and cocktails due to the vinegar and spice in many dishes, but these worked very well. The drinkers followed those with glasses of Wachau Gruner Veltliner, which excelled with the spicier dishes, and Fableist Albarino that worked best with the mild seafood. I was surprised to not see any Alsatian or German dry Rieslings, which I have found to pair best with this cuisine, but those worked nicely.
I was attracted by the coffee custard dessert, but between being fairly full and not wanting to consume caffeine in the evening decided against it. The return to the restaurant was like a conversation with an old friend who had interesting experiences to relate, and as with such meetings, we were resolved to not wait so long to be in contact again.
Little Sister is at 247 Avenida del Norte in Redondo. Open daily 4 p.m. 9:30 p.m., street parking or pay lot adjacent, wheelchair access good. Sound level moderate. Full bar, corkage $25. Phone 424-398-0237, menu at littlesisterrb.com
