Vientiane Cafe- Lao/Thai Dining

Located on 4728 Baltimore Avenue, Vientiane Cafe is a Lao/Thai family-owned restaurant named after the capital and largest city in Laos. My friends and I had a lovely early dinner there. The establishment had a nice ambience. The place was well lit with wooden chair seating, wooden tables, and pretty decor hanging on the walls. We all ordered the dinner special. For less than $20, you get a three course meal- a salad, an appetizer, and an entree.  You can customize your entree with one of these four protein tofu, chicken, beef, or shrimp options.

For my greens, I got the Tofu Yum Salad without crush peanuts. The salad was Asian herbs, lemongrass, and kaffir leaves topped with fried tofu and dressing. The dressing tasted like the sweet and sour fish sauce used in Vietnamese cuisine. It is one of my favorite sauces in the world. The tofu was crispy and absorbed the sauce. Overall, the salad was very tasty and somewhat refreshing.

Tofu Yum Salad

I ordered Steamed Vegetable Dumplings for my appetizer. Three dumplings came on a small place with a little bowl of garlic soy sauce. It was also topped with fried radish. The dumplings were soft and the skin was thin. The sauce was not too salty, but I could not taste the garlic favor.  I thought the dumplings were okay. I could not really make out what were in them. I think the stuffing might be grind imitation meat with seasoning.

Steamed Vegetable Dumplings

Lastly, I got the Sweet Basil Tofu with sticky rice. The sticky rice came in a fancy bamboo container. The rice was well cooked, soft, and had a somewhat chewy texture. The Sweet Basil Tofu was cooked with garlic, chili peppers, broccoli, carrots, and onions. The sauce had a sweet, salty, and spicy taste. When I looked closely, there were dried chili peppers in the dish which made it noticeably spicy. I thought the plate was overall flavorful and went well with my sticky rice, but it was a little too salty for my taste. The blend of sweet, salty, and spicy were not perfectly well balanced for my palate.

Sweet Bail Tofu with Sticky Rice