Red Sparrow, Dempsey Road

Red Guardian, Crimson Dynamo, Omega Red, Black Widow; all these "reddish" names (except Reddington) remind me of those old Russian/commie code names for superhumans and assassins. Like the Red Army. Definitely Red Sparrow (#01-18,  11 Dempsey Road, tel : +65 6776 6118) as well. As if the connotations weren't already enough, there was even an old Soviet Union sickle and hammer emblazoned across at the back of their bar.

But enough of communists and imagined Russian super humans from the dusty pages of comics. We're doing Vietnamese today. We began with a glass of their chanh muối - a hot drink made with preserved/salted lime. 

I struggle with pronunciation of Vietnamese words even for the food. So today, we learnt that the bánh xèo has an enunciation that sounds something like 'bun shao'. Their pancake by the way, was huge. Largest we've ever had in our limited experience and stuffed with mushrooms, bean sprouts, pork belly and shrimp. The skin was nicely greased, light and very crisp at the edges like paper thosai.

Red Sparrow has possibly the largest selection of rice paper rolls on menu we've come across. We tried their bò bía which featured something like lup cheong with omelette and stewed turnip - very much like our local poh piah. Liked it. What we didn't see coming was that it had been the pan fried omelette tied brought the roll together with its flavour.

The other roll which they had which I thought was outstanding was their cá cuốn. The grilled snapper and fermented anchovies had already killed it. The tangy and mildly spicy pineapple dip on the side pedestal-ized it as something I'd come back for.

This dish as we learnt was stir fried Tonkin jasmine flower. Kinda like those cowslip creepers that we used to get in Bangkok. Stir fried with shrimps and bean sprouts in what might have been oyster sauce and lots of black pepper. One of those things that one just had to go with steamed rice.

We had a soup called canh cá thì la. The menu mentioned it had tomato but we saw slices of starfruit. The other items in it was a bouncy fish paste and lots of dill. Very nice.

Ordered some scallops which were sweet. Wished there was a bit more of the char to round it up a notch though.

I mentioned steamed rice earlier.

So here be my virgin experience with the cà phê trứng - Vietnamese egg coffee. Egg yolk was sweeten and beaten in to a froth, kinda like a sabayon which would be layered over what I thought was a Vietnamese espresso. Not bad.