Going to Brodard without ordering one of its signature nem nuong cuon is like going to Disneyland and not riding Pirates of the Caribbean. I’ve described it before as “a spring roll to end all spring rolls,” and it is as much an inextricable part of Brodard’s DNA as the pirate ride is to the Magic Kingdom—it will never, ever go away. So you can bet that even as Brodard is set to close its original restaurant to move to better digs in Fountain Valley later this year, the nem nuong cuon and its secret sauce will go with it.
But I love Brodard’s bò bía almost as much as the nem nuong cuon. The English translation is “summer roll”—”spring roll” was taken, and “fall roll” sounds like something you do when your clothes catch on fire.Though it contains sautéed carrots and jicama, lettuce, fresh basil, peanuts, and roasted shallots, the most defining ingredient is the dried shrimp, sweet Chinese pork sausage and shreds of omelet, which, I would argue, make it the closest thing you can get to a breakfast burrito in Little Saigon. I eat mine with a dip—make that multiple dips—in the plum sauce and in between bites of Thai chile peppers.
Since an entire serving has a tendency to disappear before my eyes like an apparition, you could say that the bò bía is like the Haunted Mansion to the nem nuong cuon’s Pirates—but that would be carrying the Disneyland analogy a bit too far.
Brodard, 9892 Westminster Blvd., Ste. R, Garden Grove, (714) 530-1744; www.brodard.net
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.