Progress is not a straight line . . . I think things are gonna work out.” That’s how Barack Obama reassured Anthony Bourdain over beers and bun cha at a tiny, crowded Hanoi restaurant in the spring of 2016, shortly before everything got fucked.
Tina Nguyen is the North Shore’s bun cha ambassador. To be sure, you could already find versions of the dish at, say, Uptown’s Pho 777 (where flyers posted to the mirrored wall advertise “Bun Cha Obama”) or the late Pho Lily, where Nguyen found work after emigrating from Vietnam in 2011. But so far, no one in the city has devoted a restaurant to it to the degree that she has—Huong Lien style—in the same Glenview strip mall as Tous Les Jours Korean bakery, So Gong Dong Tofu House, and Mozu Sushi & Izakaya.
While the degree of specialization at Buncha Hanoi is to be celebrated, there are other options on the menu, which is small and focused compared to the typically expansive offerings at a Vietnamese restaurant. There are banh mi and pho, its beefy short-rib broth simmered for six hours, according to Nguyen. There’s a generous, peanut-scattered bowl of bun bo nam bo, beef and vermicelli salad that requires no strategy to consume. And there are phenomenal chicken wings, sticky with bitter caramel and mined with blazing chile.
1705 Milwaukee Ave., Glenview 847-813-9150bunchahanoiusa.com
