Susu is a Vietnamese sensation in Beijing that offers speciality dishes and modern renditions of classics. Owners Amy Li, a Chinese life coach, and her husband Jonathan Ansfield, an American reporter, renovated a 140-year-old siheyuan, restoring the original dark wooden beams. The space now features spare modern furnishings with a bright courtyard and rooftop for outdoor dining.
A rotating lunch menu is value for money, with set meals including a Susu salad or fresh spring roll and soft drink. It’s a shame that many mains available during the day are then unavailable at dinner, a quirk of the shift system worked by the two Vietnamese chefs. So dishes like the divine banh cuon, with mushrooms and minced pork inside rolls of soft rice-noodle sheets, sadly aren’t available at any time. The crusty banh mi baguettes come with the requisite liver paté, yellow mayonnaise and pickled vegetables, but they are almost all bread and missing the steamed pork sausage and head cheese that make for a classic banh mi.
The mains on Susu’s dinner menu don’t quite hit the authentic or the innovative end of the spectrum. Pho is a must at a place like this, but Susu’s beef version feels like an obligation – fine but unexciting, with slices of pink beef and a plateful of garnishing herbs. The caramelized claypot fish lacks an expected sweetness, and the beef stew has a cornstarch-like thickness and is weak on spices. The tamarind crab was a gorgeous plate of two brightly colored sea crabs quartered, lightly battered and fried, then tossed in a light, sticky sour glaze. But they just weren’t fresh, a common problem with seafood in Beijing.
Despite a few unremarkable dishes, it’s refreshing to see a Vietnamese restaurant that so clearly knows its way beyond the trite bowl of pho. Susu’s two chefs hail from the north and the south of Vietnam, and it shows in the restaurant’s impressive selection, from northern-hued beef noodle soup to southern classics including sour fish soup. It’s rare to find this kind of comprehensiveness at a Vietnamese restaurant anywhere, much less in Beijing.
Address: 10 Xi Xiang, Qianliang Hutong, (near the National Art Museum, 150m north of Sanlian Bookstore), Dongcheng District东城区钱粮胡同西巷10号
Source: timeoutbeijing.com
