Date of Visit: August 1, 2007

After Charles Phan relocated The Slanted Door to the Ferry Building in April 2004, his Vietnamese restaurant proved so popular that he installed a takeout counter around the corner to keep pace with demand. The developers of the Westfield San Francisco Centre must have liked his “Out The Door” concept. They struck a deal with Phan to open a second Out The Door in their shopping mall’s upscale food court. In fall 2006, he opened a second Out The Door, but never one to keep playing the same hand, Phan added some bonus features.

Up front, there’s a takeout counter with a back-lit blue menu touting salads, sandwiches and noodles – dry and in soups. A retail area with a communal table features ingredients, cookbooks and implements, for home use. The dining room offers everything on the takeout menu and more, plus an impressive design, highlighted by 77 honey-filled backlit glass panels. The different colors of honey, ranging from amber to brown, are impressive to see and highly original.

Charles Phan incorporated some of his long-time classics, including this grapefruit and jicama salad with red cabbage and candied pecans ($7.50). This salad works due to its crunch and citrus-sweet blend.

This Saigon roast pork sandwich featured tender slices of pork, fresh cilantro, crisp cucumbers and tangy pickled carrots ($8). I don’t know that it’s any better than the $2 version served at dingy Saigon Sandwiches on Larkin, but it was still worth ordering.

Shrimp and pork wonton soup with egg noodles ($9.50) was an upscale take on pho, the well-spiced Vietnamese noodle soup.

Alaskan halibut ($11.50) was tossed with turmeric, peanuts, fresh dill and pineapple-anchovy sauce and plated over rice vermicelli. I ate a version where the dish was invented, at Cha Ca La Vong in Ha Noi, and Out The Door’s compared pretty well. Cha Ca La Vong used sea bass instead of halibut, and plenty of butter instead of nouveau pineapple-anchovy sauce, but it was basically the same idea.

Rice noodles stir-fried with chicken, shiitake mushrooms, mung bean sprouts and egg ($9.50) were seemingly simple, but there was plenty of flavor.

I drank a glass of fresh lemonade ($2.50) with a slice of lime, nice and refreshing.

I never expected to find such good food in a mall food court, but Charles Phan has once again defied the odds. Out The Door isn’t as ambitious as the original, but never claimed to be, and the original never had honey-filled panels.

Related Posts

1. The Slanted Door – San Francisco, CA – July 23, 2006
2. Langkawi Malaysian Island Restaurant: Hunting for Blue Flowers in a San Mateo Strip Mall
3. Mapo Makes a Koreatown Strip Mall Comfortable
4. Q&A with bar director Erik Adkins (The Slanted Door/Heaven’s Dog)
5. Kobawoo House: (Pork) Bellying Up to Koreatown Strip Mall

This entry is filed under California, Northern California, San Francisco, Vietnamese.