Anh + Chi – Butter Garlic Chicken Wings

I’m not sure how this always seems to happen to us… but it seems like anytime we head out to a part of the city that we usually don’t visit, we wind up smack dab in the middle of some kind of festival or parade!

Case in point, we were heading down to Main Street to try out Anh + Chi and wound up in the middle of Car Free Day (which wouldn’t have been an issue except for the fact that we were in a car). After parking a fair distance away due to all of the road closures, we finally made our way to our destination.

Anh and Chi is the latest interpretation of Vietnamese cuisine from the Nguyen family. The restaurant, run by brother and sister team Vincent and Amelie, is at the former site of their parents long standing Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Hoang Vietnamese Restaurant.

We started out our meal with drinks… specifically the Lime Soda and Dragon Fruit Tonic ($4 each). Usually, I find that dragon fruit doesn’t have much flavour so I was pleasantly surprised at how good the dragon fruit tonic was. They also brought us a pitcher of cucumber water which was quite refreshing.

First up here was the Butter Garlic Chicken Wings ($11). These weren’t crispy-style wings but were very good. The chicken was plump and the meat was more succulent.

Next was the Khay Bánh Hỏi Lụi Nướng or Street Side Platter ($17). It comes with house-made pork sausage, beef in betel leaf, grilled chicken, crisp fried spring rolls, and grilled prawn served with fresh lettuce, mixed herbs, pickled carrots and daikon, fine rice vermicelli, rice paper and chili fish sauce. Okay, let me just say that our first 2 attempts at making our own rolls were epic fails. The trick is that you need to get the rice paper slightly soaked with water… enough to make it pliable but not too wet. Then you have to be careful and deliberate with your fillings to ensure the rice paper wraps up properly without tearing.

The fried spring rolls in this dish were superb! And I really liked the spicy and savory dipping sauce that came with the platter.

In the shot below, you can see the bowl (on the right) that you use to soften up your rice paper. In addition to the Khay Bánh Hỏi Lụi Nướng, you can also see the Bánh Mì ($6) and Bún Xào Sả Ớt ($12).

We wound up ordering the house-made pâté bánh mì which was served in a crisp baguette along with cucumber, green onions, cilantro, chili, pickled carrots, daikon and house-made garlic aioli.

The chicken vermicelli bowl was served over a bed of greens, mixed herbs and chili fish sauce. I thought that the chicken, stir-fried with chili and onions, was prepared very well and had a pleasing mix of slight char on the exterior while still retaining the juicy flavour on the inside.

Overall, I was quite pleased with the food here (especially the sauces). The do-it-yourself rice paper rolls were a bit difficult to figure out at first but I think we finally got the hang of it.

3388 Main Street
Vancouver, BC

anhandchi.com