I've been living a stone's throw away from the Argyle Street asian restaurants for 9 years, yet have only recently been turned on to the deliciousness of Vietnamese cuisine. My "a-ha" moment was visiting Hoanh Long with my a group of folks from Old Town School. Located on Lincoln Ave, (the sleezy motel part of Lincoln) just east of McCormick, it's not too far of a drive for North Siders...well worth the drive, actually, and you can go to Borders after. It's tough to find. It's in a little strip of non-descript shops, and you can usually find a spot right out front. But just so ya know, when you are driving north on Lincoln, it'll be on your left hand side and if you get to McCormick, you went too far.
So I visited in the summer and have been dreaming about the amazing meal I had ever since, so I finally returned with my friend Darrell. My first visit I had followed my director's advice on ordering and attempted to replicate that same awesome meal I had on the second visit. It was Darrell's first time, so he followed my lead on what to order. We started with the lemongrass beef salad to share. Large portion of perfectly seasoned thin strips of slightly crispy beef on top of a mountain of fresh herbs--basil, mint, cilantro, with sprouts, lettuce and fresh rice noodles. It's DIY here...they bring you a steaming bowl of water and the rice paper thingys to dip in the water to make your own spring roll type item. So it's fun...you can choose what to roll up in your roll of awesomeness! The combination of those herbs with a little of the rice noodles, sprouts for crunch and then a kind of sweet dipping sauce---WOW...it will excite your tongue.
For the entree I ordered a basic shrimp and veggie dish with rice noodles which I thought was going to be the same dish I ordered on my first visit, but sadly it wasn't. The dish wasn't horrible, but it wasn't half as good as the one I ordered the first time. After talking with my director at work, he said the dish I had ordered was "barbecue shrimp"....and said "that's the best one of the menu...and it's not one of their fried noodle dishes"....so I had just picked the wrong dish. This dish reminded my more of Chinese food, like I said, not bad, but not what I had envisioned. And I was searching for the noodles in it and even had to call the waiter over to ask him "where's the noodles"? He took my spoon, lifted up the veggies and said "right there....those are rice noodles". Well, I guess they were but they didn't resemble anything like a noodle. They were the shape of a stick of string cheese, fried up and tucked way under the veggies. Well, I certainly felt kind of stupid. Well I ate it anyway and now I now what to order for next time. The barbecue shrimp dish comes with all those fresh herbs from the appetizer and it's just fantastic. And the noodles are recognizable and not fried...the dish is VERY fresh.
I'm waiting for a really cold day to go there and try the Pho, which everyone is always raving about.
Check out what other folks have to say about Hoanh Long on Yelp!
Hoanh Long6144 N Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL 60686
(773) 583-7770
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