Ba Le Vietnamese Restaurant

When chowhounds think about Vietnamese food in Washington, they think about Eden Center: 45 bakeries, shops and restaurants where they can round up such specialties as banh mi, the French-inspired sandwich, and pho. Eden Center is great, especially if you live in Virginia. For the rest of us, a trip around the Beltway at dinnertime on a weeknight is far from appetizing.

Rockville is Maryland's eden of ethnic food. Happily, for those craving a little lemon grass pork closer to home, there's Ba Le Vietnamese Restaurant.

Ba Le looks like many no-frills ethnic joints on Rockville Pike. In fact, it's an independently owned franchise of a chain with locations in Hawaii, Chicago and St. Louis. But don't let that put you off. The menu isn't standardized: Owner Christian Hoang sources the ingredients himself, and chef Hoa Tang makes almost everything, from sauces to dessert, from scratch.

The restaurant, which Hoang has run for three years, offers a variety of classic dishes. Spring rolls stuffed with tofu and vermicelli noodles ($4.25) were fresh and beautifully packed so that they didn't come apart after one bite. They come with a rich hoisin-peanut sauce, but you can also request the nuoc cham, an anchovy-based dipping sauce that accompanies the crispy summer rolls. Some guests like it so much, Hoang reports, that they buy it in 16- and 32-ounce bottles.

We liked pretty much anything with pork. On the grill, the lean cut from the shoulder got a deep char but stayed juicy. The grilled lemon grass pork with vermicelli noodles ($6.75) was bright with its salad of cucumber and basil. The combination fried rice ($7.75) was deliciously ungreasy with a good mix of spicy pork ("like Vietnamese chorizo," one taster chirped), shrimp and egg.

Shrimp, too, was a winner. It was tender and not overcooked. We tried it with rice crepes ($8), which, sadly, had turned gummy on the trip home. Stick to the rice and vermicelli dishes and the noodle soups for to-go orders.

A Vietnamese restaurant isn't the first place you'd think of for dessert. But one of my favorites at Ba Le is the tapioca pudding ($2). It's made in-house and comes in five flavors: banana, mung bean, black-eyed pea, corn and taro root. They're refreshing on a summer day or the perfect sugar kick to get you through traffic on the pike.

-- Jane Black

Ba Le Vietnamese Restaurant 842-A Rockville Pike, Rockville, 301-294-7808; http://www.baleofrockville.com. Hours: Mondays through Saturdays 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sundays 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Know where to find great takeout food? E-mail us at food@washpost.com.