The Pig & The Lady’s Staff Petitioned to Keep This Dish on the Menu

Photo: Mari Taketa

Two dishes appeared in the summer that I fell in love with. Both were on the lunch menu at The Pig & the Lady, so after repeated visits to order them, I resigned myself to a Zen approach of letting go. Dishes at Pig often disappear with each new seasonal menu—which chef-owner Andrew Le promised would happen again. “It’s fall already,” he said, which sounded incongruous in September’s 90-degree heat. “I’ll have something even better.”

When they were still there a couple of weeks ago, I asked what happened. It turns out the staff circulated a petition to keep two dishes, including Cha Ca Hanoi, my new favorite cold noodles, on the permanent menu. Which, as far as I know, is a first in Pig’s 10-year history.

So have at it, noodle fans: golden fried catfish pieces tinged with turmeric and delivered sizzling on a cast-iron platter heaped with grilled green onions and fresh dill—to be eaten not as is but mixed with the accompanying vermicelli bun noodles and doused with pineapple-shrimp-chile-lime sauce, which packs a big punch. Cha Ca Hanoi ($21) feeds two hungry or three moderate appetites (order an extra side of bun). And don’t forget to toss in some roasted peanuts.

The dish is an improbable riot that lives up to Le’s signature yin-yang balances of hot and cold, sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, spicy and salty in bite after bite. It’s also a dish I’ve had before—with Le and his family in Hanoi at Cha Ca La Vong, the most famous and oldest restaurant to feature this dish on a street where every restaurant features it—though La Vong’s version was more subdued and much oilier.

Photo: Mari Taketa

My other favorite, the deceptively plain-sounding Tofu Stuffed Tomato ($18), is also one I know from family lunch tables in Vietnam. The plump, umami-bomb globes have fillings of tofu, wood ear mushrooms and garlic and come with an even more drool-inducing sauce of tomato cores with black pepper and Maggi seasoning.

Traditional Vietnamese cooking is out of character for Le, a James Beard Award semifinalist who uses Viet inspirations as starting points for unexpected forays into global, modern American and local flavors. I couldn’t recall him hewing this traditional since he started Pig as a farmers market stall 12 years ago, tentative and still defining his own style.

SEE ALSO: Pig and the Lady: Not Just a Personal Addiction

“I guess in retrospect, I wanted the lunch menu to be just as strong as our dinner menu,” Le texted when I asked why. “Also, it made our a.m. and p.m. teams excited about each other’s menus. Our dinner cooks want to come for lunch because they recognize the traditional flavors, and our lunch cooks want to come to dinner for the creativity.”

The other dish the staff petitioned to keep on the lunch menu is the Hainan Chicken. And when I told Le I like the stuffed tomatoes even more than Cha Ca Hanoi, he proclaimed the tomatoes would stay, too. So much for going Zen—although this is a way more satisfying result.

Open Tuesday to Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 to 9 p.m., 83 N. King St., (808) 585-8255, thepigandthelady.com, @pigandthelady