When you take a seat on a tiny stool at this Vietnamese spot, you should immediately survey the state of the table. Move some sauces around, warn friends to keep their phones in their pocket, and create as much space as possible. Because if you’re doing Lai Rai right, you should have a borderline overwhelming amount of plates in front of you.
Davie is a great place to be if you love Vietnamese food, but we haven’t found another menu that revolves around nhậu dishes like Lai Rai’s. You can, conceivably, order one entree here, but “tapas” is in the name for a reason. The most exciting things on the menu—like the ốc dishes or the fish sauce chicken wings—make the most sense in the center of the table, up for grabs. Once you’ve cleared that stuff out of the way, request a pair of gloves and end the meal with one of the whole fried lobster dishes.
Between the shareable plates and the beer towers, Lai Rai acts like a big group restaurant, but it’s actually pretty tiny. They can Tetris some of the tables—both inside and on the sidewalk—to accommodate a bigger group. You’ll have to hunch over and tuck your elbows in to make it work, though. Don’t let that dissuade you from celebrating a birthday here. Just try to bring friends with decent spatial awareness.
Food RundownEscargot In Coconut Sauce
The coconut and lemongrass sauce is balancing wonderfully on the edge of sweet and savory. Mix the snails around a bit to make sure they get flooded with that sauce.
Crispy Fish Sauce Chicken Wings
We’d be happy if they dialed up the fish sauce just a little more on these, but they’re still excellent. Every nanometer of the wing is crunchy—and stays crunchy, no matter how long these sit on the table.
Golden Fried Quail
In case you need another fried bird in your life—or just a smaller portion—this is great, too. It’s not dredged before it’s fried, so the skin is golden and crisp.
Tamarind Lobster
End with a lobster. They have a few versions, but we really love the sour flavors of this one, which is tossed in a sauce thick with garlic, butter, and tamarind. Request a pair of gloves if you’re not confident in your chopstick skills.