Vientiane Laotian Restaurant

Monday April 9
West Philadelphia has a wide range of ethnic restaurants, and this one is not only novel to us, but has the advantage of being located within a block's walk of Brian & Bob's B&B. Dale & Mark met us there, and the six of us had a very pleasant dinner. The place also does the more familiar Thai cuisine, so it was difficult to tell what the Laotians share with Thailand, and what was just Thai.
We shared a raft of appetizers, of course: vegetarian spring rolls, shrimp, and pork dumplings. For main courses, three of us got the home-made sausages (unusual, therefore Laotian? The newly hired waitstaff couldn't say), and boy were they right. They were chunky, spicy, well-grilled and good. So was Aw Lao, a soupy savory beef dish. Pad Thai was pad Thai. My fish casserole, which sounded great on the menu, didn't arrive until everyone else was nearly done, and though the shrimp on top were good, the scallops and vermicelli underneath had that fish-spam taste and texture that sometimes appears in Asian food - appealing to palates trained on it, perhaps, though not to me.
Dinner ended with a banana feast: tempura-fried bananas, and banana spring rolls with chocolate. Unless you're a fan of anything bananoid, they proved that Asian restaurants don't do desserts so well. I'd rather have a bowl of sweet almond soup any time. Mark tried the coconut ice cream, and it was a good thing that Brian, a confirmed coconutophobe who had been asking nervously whether each dish contained any tinge of the awful fruit, was sitting at the other end of the table. The ice cream was not only made out of pure coconut milk, but was dusted with grated coconut, and came in a coconut shell. Actually, pretty good.