NEW SAIGON®

Denver has a number of decent Vietnamese restaurants, but New Saigon outshines them all. Although service remains a crapshoot and the tidy, simply adorned place isn't going to win any awards for innovative decor, the Vietnamese dishes that come out of the kitchen are unsurpassed. Choose from hundreds of entrees --many variations on a theme, with the kind of meat making the difference -- and then expect to get nothing but the best, from the egg and spring rolls to the garlic-kissed frogs' legs and marinated meats so sweet and tender they're almost like flesh candy. The noodle bowls are inexpensive but generous and packed with good ingredients; the garnishes are plentiful and fresh; and the dipping sauces could not be more authentic. New Saigon is an oldie that's still a goodie.

Readers' choice: New Saigon (By Westword)

At long last, we found a better Vietnamese restaurant than New Saigon, one with even more than the hundreds of dishes this place offers, one with even more deeply flavored sauces, one with an even more welcoming attitude. To get there, hop on a plane bound for Saigon. Get off and start walking..

 

The only bad Vietnamese food is no Vietnamese food, but the best Vietnamese food being done in Denver is coming out of the kitchen at New Saigon. With hundreds of choices on the menu, dozens of sauces, a friendly and accommodating staff, and plenty of talent in the galley, anyone with a taste for the cuisine of the mysterious East is sure to find something to like at this perennial favorite. And while you're enjoying your spring rolls, nuoc cham and blazing hot curries, you're also getting a lesson in authentic Vietnamese cuisine, because New Saigon cooks Vietnamese food the same way it's been cooked in old Saigon for the past hundred years.

Back in the day, this stretch of Federal was called Little Saigon because it was the neighborhood most densely populated by the recently arrived wave of post-war Vietnamese immigrants. Not surprisingly, these newcomers to the Rocky Mountain West brought some of the flavors of their old home with them and began founding authentic Vietnamese restaurants among the strip malls. A lot of Vietnamese restaurants. And though many have since closed and successive generations moved out beyond the old neighborhood, New Saigon is still here, working from an expansive menu of dishes once completely foreign but now comfortingly recognizable, offering the same uncompromisingly authentic flavors of Southeast Asia that it has since day one.