Two of the more interesting recent discoveries in Chinatown happen to be right next door to each other, on Jones Boulevard just north of Spring Mountain Road: the Vietnamese Bosa 1 and the Taiwanese China Mama. I've been to lunch, alone, at both in the last month, and had some great food and kinda funny service. Not funny bad, just ... interesting.
China Mama is not the most English-friendly Chinese restaurant, but it's not too tough to figure things out here. The place is pretty big and the walls are a bright green color. This is not an Americanized Chinese restaurant, so there's no lunch special with an egg roll and egg flower soup on the side; why would you want another joint like that? Unfortunately, the menu is not built for the solo diner who wants to try different things, so I had a big dish of shredded pork and dried tofu for lunch. It was a bit salty and quite tasty, not spicy at all but very satisfying with rice.
Other notable dishes on the menu include green onion pancakes, cucumber salad, cold salted duck and pork soup dumplings. Those dumplings were what I really wanted to try, so once my lunch was brought out, I asked for the juicy dumplings, too. And then things got weird. They shot me down. The server told me I'd never be able to eat it all, this heaping plate of pork and tofu plus 8 rather large soup dumplings. He seriously talked me out of it. That hasn't happened before. Almost out of spite, I devoured my food, all of it, and I will be back for those dumplings. Be ready, China Mama.
Something very different happened to me when I visited Bosa 1, just a few steps away. I walked into the much smaller but clean and comfortable Vietnamese restaurant and immediately noticed a sign that read "Cash Only." Crestfallen, I started to ask the lady behind the counter where the nearest ATM could be found. "Well, if you want you can pay next time."
Um, what?
"Have you been here before?" No. "Well everybody always comes back, so you can pay next time you come in." Seriously? "Sure."
China Mama is not the most English-friendly Chinese restaurant, but it's not too tough to figure things out here. The place is pretty big and the walls are a bright green color. This is not an Americanized Chinese restaurant, so there's no lunch special with an egg roll and egg flower soup on the side; why would you want another joint like that? Unfortunately, the menu is not built for the solo diner who wants to try different things, so I had a big dish of shredded pork and dried tofu for lunch. It was a bit salty and quite tasty, not spicy at all but very satisfying with rice.
Other notable dishes on the menu include green onion pancakes, cucumber salad, cold salted duck and pork soup dumplings. Those dumplings were what I really wanted to try, so once my lunch was brought out, I asked for the juicy dumplings, too. And then things got weird. They shot me down. The server told me I'd never be able to eat it all, this heaping plate of pork and tofu plus 8 rather large soup dumplings. He seriously talked me out of it. That hasn't happened before. Almost out of spite, I devoured my food, all of it, and I will be back for those dumplings. Be ready, China Mama.
Something very different happened to me when I visited Bosa 1, just a few steps away. I walked into the much smaller but clean and comfortable Vietnamese restaurant and immediately noticed a sign that read "Cash Only." Crestfallen, I started to ask the lady behind the counter where the nearest ATM could be found. "Well, if you want you can pay next time."
Um, what?
"Have you been here before?" No. "Well everybody always comes back, so you can pay next time you come in." Seriously? "Sure."
That's never happened. I wasn't sure if it was an act of supreme culinary confidence or just good faith, but I was impressed. Turned out Bosa 1 has every right to be confident, but they shouldn't be giving this stuff away. Las Vegas' top two restaurant critics both love this place, and now so do I. They stuffed me with fresh shrimp spring rolls that I could have eaten all day and a broken rice combo plate with a skewer of grilled shrimp, barbecued pork, a peppery quiche-like egg cake with more pork inside, shredded pork skin, a fried shrimp cake and a pickled vegetable salad. This was all on one plate, everything was delicious and had I paid, I would have cleared the place for $15. The best parts were the homemade fish sauce, which I mixed with a little scorching chili paste and dumped on everything, and the also homemade chicken soup, a clear, clean broth that I used to soak some of those vegetables and pork skin. At any price, this is one of the best lunches in Vegas.
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