Address:
12111 Brookhurst Street
Garden Grove, CA 92844
Phone Number:
714 636 1188
Trish Loan opened Co La four years ago on the back side of a Little Saigon strip mall. Co la means “crane” in Vietnamese (the bird, not the construction equipment). Before the arrival of businesses like Co La, the area of Garden Grove north of the 22 freeway wouldn’t have been considered Little Saigon. Evidently, the quarter-million-person strong community of Vietnamese-Americans in northern Orange County continues to grow.
With Trish out of town in Vietnam, sister Tanya was running the restaurant. They’re clearly a family of entrepreneurs. Tanya owns a nearby salon, which was designed by Trish, a former engineer.
Co La shares space with Club Boba, another facet to Trish’s business. The left side features a sit-down Vietnamese restaurant with colorful walls lined with framed watercolors and intricate multi-panel paintings, all depicting life in Vietnam. Club Boba offers a variety of smoothies and iced teas, with or without tapioca balls.
Goi Ga ($5.48) combined shredded papaya, shaved onions, mint leaves, pulled white-meat chicken and fried shallots. The thoughtfully composed salad came with a dish of chile-spiked ginger sauce. That third dish of sprouts and herbs had nothing to do with the salad; it belongs with the noodles.
Speaking of noodles, Mi Quang ($6.98) utilized flat rice noodles sliced pork, shell-on shrimp, three hard-boiled quail eggs and a curry-like broth. The flavorful soup was topped with fried shallots, herbs, shaved onions, and a sheet of fried pigskin, for crunch. The more pig, the better.
At first glance, Com Steak Com La ($7.98) seemed like a strange offering, but Vietnam was a French colony, so this preparation made sense, especially after tasting it. The steak was luscious, rimmed with fat but fairly lean, saturated with a rich, demi glace-like “special sauce,” piled with mushrooms and onions. The tender meat was served with steamed yellow rice and vegetables – broccoli, carrots and green beans. This dish would warrant at least twice the price in a Los Angeles bistro.
Every table held two dishes of chile sauce: one with oil (extra spicy) and one without (still pretty spicy). Dabs of the burgundy sauce really ignited the noodle soup, with flavor and fire.
On the way out, we stopped by Club Boba. A display case was lined with pastries like almond cookies and palmiers (aka elephant ears). There was a lengthy wall menu of fresh-made drinks, but a pre-made drink in the fridge caught my eye. The clear drink contained a two-inch-thick layer of mung beans. Tanya took the cup to the back, where the chef added fresh cut strips of young coconut. The sweet liquid, earthy beans and fresh coconut tasted great together.
Co La offers a focused menu of Vietnamese comfort food for real value. Given that combination, and the added bonus of Club Boba, it’s worth returning to the outer reaches of Little Saigon.
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