Oliu Cafe struggles to stand out in the capital’s overcrowded dining scene, but its quirkiness has Aaron Santos coming back for more.
Oliu Cafe is pure Viet nam for better or worse. It lingers there in the middle of a few worlds, from the outside almost seamlessly blending into the local street cafe scene, while on the inside feeling like some sort of mangled Terry Gilliam movie set gone astray – but with, as the overhang outside proudly boasts, "Cafe cocktails fastfood steaks ice cream".
It’s a neighbourhood joint pushed through or pulled out of some kind of sci-fi wormhole. Every employee speaks surprisingly good English and the decor is sparse but quirky, with lots of squares and circles on the floors and ceiling. A long crescent-shaped lamp has been turned into an archway and yellow-tinted, semi-see-through panes sit askew on the low roof. I stare into what I think is a mirror for about 15 seconds before realising that it’s just a window into another room, but with no door that I can see.
Almost right from the start, I’m unfairly critical of places like this. I’d like to see a real honest, weekly-updated figure on the number of restaurants/cafes/et al. spread across our fair city. I’m going to estimate it at around two billion. A seriously dedicated gastronome could spend years trawling through Ha noi and never even break the surface. Not to mention transient street vendors or those people who keep boiling pots on their bicycles.
So how does a little place like Oliu Cafe push itself out from what could only conservatively be called a crowded scene? Well, it kind of doesn’t. At least not in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a good neighbourhood spot.
Maybe it’s the quirkiness and comfortably odd nature of the establishment that makes it memorable. Unfortunately, like so many restaurants the city over, the menu itself is a sprawling journey through pretty much every cuisine in the world. As if they were daring you to not find something you might at least consider eating, or were afraid of not having something someone could possibly at some future date want.
I count 75 menu items, including two pasta dishes and four desserts. At what I would consider a neighbourhood cafe. And this isn’t even including the sizeable drinks menu.
It seems a shame to water the menu down like this. Especially when, as is the case with Oliu, the food is quite good. On a few separate occasions, I order the Hue-style beef salad, grilled squid with chilli and fresh spring rolls with prawns and pork. All of which knocked my taste buds’ proverbial socks off. The salad is zippy and sweet, with flavourful pieces of beef, the grilled squid is tender and the fresh spring rolls offer a much-appreciated burst of hereby freshness.
It’s these smaller, quicker dishes that stand out on the menu. Not to mention the tasty and nicely-priced office lunch sets, fresh fruit shakes, vitamin-heavy juices and sweet, strong and sobering Vietnamese coffee.
Unfortunately, everything else feels a lot like filler. There are hotpots, chicken dishes, fish for days and a number of beef plates, but I can’t help but get kind of lost in them.
The "European Menu" is plagued with a similar problem. It’s not really the place I want to enjoy beef tournedos or salmon sashimi. And spaghetti just looks funny next to most Vietnamese dishes. After reading through this culinary tour, I opt instead for an unsurprisingly delicious and satisfying bowl of pumpkin soup. My stomach longs for the "Australian simple beef steak with French fries," but my heart just isn’t into it.
And in the end it isn’t that I think these items will fall flat; it’s that I think these things are striving to be something, or perhaps somewhere, they’re not. In this environment, I want to be with my friends, sipping shakes and coffee and picking at spring rolls, or something else equally non-committal.
So Oliu is the perfect little neighbourhood joint, but it doesn’t transcend this. There’s a big fake plastic tree pushed right up next to my table, obscuring the face of the next patron over. There’s a staircase leading upstairs, but I haven’t seen a customer use it. Things are just a little off and sort of accidentally more hip than they should be.
It’s these things, and I guess places like Oliu Cafe, that make me love living here. I think of the neighbourhood coffee shops in my hometown and the only things that come to mind are either Starbucks or the old diner that burns the coffee and has roaches behind the day-old donuts. Both of which are predictable in their own ways. Starbucks will always be streamlined and pre-tested and ready for mass approval, while the diner will always have empty tables, sugar jars with crusted rims, linoleum floors and coffee that tastes like melted consumer plastic. I’ll take Oliu Cafe any day of the week.
And then just to kind of hit this feeling home, as I’m leaving my table and walking out, I hear the waitress running up behind me, clicking across the very geometrically-pleasing tile floor, rushing to open the door for me. She smiles and tells me to have a nice day and well, gosh, I’ll be damned if that still doesn’t get me every time.
(Source:VNS)
Tag: Cuisine , Environment , Ha Noi , Hue , Tour , Viet Nam , Vietnam , Vietnamese How I learned to love the local joint - Oliu Cafe
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