A warm meal on a cold winter night

West End

There are just over 100 restaurants in the West End’s foodie row, the unofficial boundaries of which run from Central Park as far west as Wall Street and from Portage Avenue to Notre Dame Avenue.

Picking just one restaurant can be difficult. Luckily, when my family treated me to dinner out recently, they came with a short-list of recommendations.

I like Vietnamese food. It is exotic but familiar, too. The influx of Vietnamese refugees to Canada in the 1970s through the ’90s led to Vietnamese restaurants popping up all over. They were a welcome addition to the area of rural B.C. I lived in.

On this occasion, we wanted a really nice meal out and Viva at 505 Sargent Ave. provided just that.

It is obviously a popular spot as quite a few of the other tables in the comfortable back room we were shown into were occupied.

The unassuming restaurant has an extensive menu but we rather unadventurously stuck to classic dishes. An order of spring rolls to start, of course. Beef and broccoli, shrimp and mixed vegetables and chicken with lemongrass for the main dishes. Any of the phos would have been lovely and warming but undoubtedly a complete meal.

The spring rolls were distinctive and authentic, as they are wrapped in rice paper. The chicken dish had a lovely complex sauce that let the spices shine. No gloopy. starchy sauces here. Notably, the veggies in all the dishes (and the shrimp) were cooked perfectly tender-crisp.

The congenial atmosphere at Viva owes much to owner Phuong Nguyen’s obvious care for his customers and love of the restaurant business. During a friendly chat he shared that the pho and the delicious spring rolls are both customer favourites.

Nguyen and his family were among the almost 200,000 Vietnamese boat people who were accepted as refugees in Canada after languishing in camps in Malaysia. They opened Viva in 1993, three years after arriving in Canada. It is now one of the ‘old-timers’ of foodie row. Even though Phong took over the restaurant in 2006 after growing up around it, his parents are still cooking in the kitchen as they enjoy it. On the night we ate there, his auntie was cooking and she had great culinary skills.

It is always nice to get out and share a meal and stories on cold winter nights and we had a lovely time and great food.