Night out on the town in Silverlake

Tom and I had a little date night tonight. Our planned destinations were Vietnamese Soy Cafe and Intelligentsia but plans changed a bit.

Soy Cafe is a little hard to spot. I forgot that I had seen it before until I saw it again. Turns out it is right next to Hyperion Tavern, a bar that I love to go to sometimes for Rock Band Night (Wednesdays 10pm-2am), which is also very difficult to find the first time because it has no signs.

Anywho, Soy Cafe was closed for a while but just re-opened about three weeks ago. This was my first time there, but I've been trying to eat here ever since Jesse mentioned it like a year ago. I wanted some kind of noodle dish like I saw in pictures on Yelp but right now their menu is limited to spring rolls, banh mi (Viet baguette sandwiches) and drinks but Huy, the guy running the one-man show tonight, told us that he was going to add noodles back onto the menu soon (chicken and a vegan option).

The restaurant is a lot smaller than I expected. The only seating is at the counter and I think the place probably seats around eight people at most. The decor is pretty cool though, very clean and decorated with sort of a modern coffee and tea theme. When you sit down, it feels like you're sitting in someone's kitchen, and from where I was sitting, I could see some of where Huy did his thang.

We ordered spring rolls which were carefully constructed and wrapped very tightly. Sometimes when I eat spring rolls, stuff tends to fall out while I'm eating and it gets all over my hands but these were awesome and the sauce was really good and not all gooey or overly sweet. I had a banh mi with jambon, Viet ham, pate and a special kind of mayo and all the other little things that go into banh mi and Tom had a vegan (they always have a vegan option) banh mi that had "meat" that was sort of like pork skin with a sauce that tasted kind of like hoisin sauce. They were so good and flavorful! Very well crafted as well. You could tell from the way the sandwich looked (and from seeing him put it together in the back kitchen area) that the sandwich wasn't just a bunch of stuff thrown together, and all the veggies were very fresh. The baguette, which Huy says is what makes the sandwich, was not too hard and didn't fall apart.

We stayed a while longer and talked to Huy. He drives like two hours just to get to the restaurant! So craze. He's a really friendly and talkative guy who lives a very interesting life as a musician/singer and restaurateur (I think he co-owns the place with friends but not sure).

We wanted to go for a little coffee and dessert afterward at Intelligentsia but when we walked up to it at the late hour of 8:45 p.m., it was closed. I have heard so many good things about this place and Tom loves it so I was pretty disappointed. We settled instead for Moroccan/Algerian/something like that Casbah Cafe. We got some kind of little lemony chocolate cake thing that came with a little thing of cream. It was really, really tasty. Not too rich or too sweet. Unfortunately, the cuppa mocha we got blew. There wasn't much of a coffee flavor in it, so that was a little deceiving. The place was a little overdecorated and tried too hard and Tom thought even the people were trying a bit too hard to converse with each other. It looked kind of cool but may have been a little much. Our favorite part about the place, though, was the page boy who served us coffee. He was friendly.