Bia Garden - Reviewed

*** Three Stars

Address: 154 Orchard St., btwn. Stanton & Rivington Sts.

Phone: (212)780-0100

Cuisine:  Vietnamese street food

Vibe: Hush hush backyard beer garden

Occasion:; Group dinner; Beer binges; LES dining.

Hours: Dinner; Seven days a week, Sun-Thu, 5p.m-12a.m., Sat & Sun,5p.m.-2a.m.

Don't Miss Dish: Crispy pork belly; Duck nem sausage; Baked whole fish.

Average Price: Appetizers, $10, Entrees, $15, No dessert.

Reservations: No reservations accepted.

Cash only.
Capsule: An exotic beer oasis on the Lower East Side.

 

Think La Esquina by way of Vietnam and you’ve got Bia Garden, which recently opened on the Lower East Side.  If you’re not the kind of eater that hunts down restaurants, you might miss it.  But it’s worth discovering.  There’s a dinky grill out front, the kind you’d find in someone’s backyard in the suburbs.   Step down a flight of stairs and you’ll find yourself at a take-out counter where you can grab a bahn mi or bbq rib rolls.  The shelves are stocked with fish sauce and Café Du Monde coffee cans and there are bags of shrimp crackers hanging over the kitchen window.   

The hostess mysteriously escorts you through a walk-in refrigerator door and a hallway lined with beer bottles along one wall and an open kitchen along the other.  Finally, you stumble upon a covered garden with twirling ceiling fans overhead, benches, and rough wood tables topped with Café Du Monde chopstick holders.  There’s a vibrant mural of Vietnam painted on the back wall.  And you realize the bare bones, take-out counter is a grimy cover for a hidden courtyard.

 

 Bia Garden is Michael Bao Huynh’s newest venture.  He’s quickly amassing a small empire of Vietnamese restaurants that include Bar Bao, Baoguette, and Pho Sure.  Bia Garden only serves Asian beer, like Tiger, Tsingtao, Taj Majal, and Kingfisher.  There are twelve different kinds that come in six packs, a dozen, or by the case, and arrive in buckets on ice.  But you only pay for what you drink, so you can try as many different kinds as you like.  My favorite beer was a smooth, dark BeerLao, that paired up well with many of the sweet, fatty meats you’ll find on the menu, like shaking beef, duck nem sausage, or even the spicy seafood hot pot.  The setting and the menu with small, medium, and large plates is considerably laidback.

 

I loved the crispy pork belly – crusty nibbles of sweet meat – as much the caramel-fish sauce that accompanied it.  There’s a good starter of bbq rib rolls with slippery vermicelli noodles and a meaty duck nem sausage, studded with pine nuts, and served with an anchovy dipping sauce. Baked whole fish can be boring and tedious.  Not this one.  Bia Garden’s whole fish is a feast that requires every inch of table space.  Out from the kitchen comes a shimmery pink snapper crowned with a fistful of scallions and crushed peanuts.  It comes with Vietnamese basil, pickled onions, fish sauce, mushrooms, and rice paper.  You dip the rice paper in warm water and built your own fish wrap.

 

Unfortunately, the crab spring rolls tasted like every other spring roll you could find on the street in Chinatown and so did the shaking beef, which lacked the peppery kick that you’d traditionally find in the dish.  If you’re in the mood for a beer and a bite, you might want to stray from your usual hangout and venture through the kitchen to this backyard Bia Garden.