Because of the geographic location, Vietnamese Cuisine and Guizhou cuisine has a natural link; Vietnamese Cuisine would be my first choice besides Chinese. Nanshan in Chinatown, Saigon in uptown and the PHO in my neighborhood are the restaurants I visit often. When I worked in downtown Kansas City years ago, I went to a little dirty Vietnamese’s Pho place every Friday with my Chinese friends, Compared to those so called American-Chinese food, a bowl of Pho is much closer to my home town taste, and cured my homesickness a little.

Not too long ago, hair gel and frilly shirts ruled this town. Back then, in the supersaturated neon years of the 1980s, you couldn’t walk a block without running into a pop star–Madonna in the East Village, Red Hot Chili Pepper Anthony Keidis on the streets of Chelsea, and Howard Jones in front of his subterranean (and surprisingly good) West Village vegetarian eatery, Nowhere.

Michael Bao Huynh is still at Bún, kind of, or perhaps as much as he ever was, I’m not sure. “He’s my brother,” said Tony Lam, who owns the place and does the food. Huynh’s a partner there, but his day-to-day involvement is minimal, except perhaps when Tony’s out of town. And maybe not then, either. (click here if you’re curious about this topic, otherwise read on as I am about to change the subject).

Michael Huynh’s ambition is clearly visible --  moxie right there on the plate.  With his quick sweet smile, he bluntly informed his backer at Mai House, Drew Nieporent, that he was off to open a noodle shop for his new wife and he’d be back. So it wasn’t just new dishes he was scouting on his trip to Saigon.  It was also a beautiful wife. 

The name, pronounced "boon," denotes the bed of soft, white Vietnamese rice vermicelli that underlies several dishes. So the excellent charred hanger steak ($11) comes spiced and sliced in a bowl, on top ofa nest of the noodles and with matchsticks of mouth-wateringly tart green apple. Pour fish sauce over the top and it's a vibrant, exquisitely balanced little composition. Fiery grilled chicken ($10) and assorted mushrooms ($10) are other appealing options, but the bun and pho bowls are not the best of the bunch. There's more going on in other small plates, which are, incidentally, easier to share as well.

What Momofuku did for ramen (turn it into a cult favorite capable of inciting frequent foodie riots), Bun (say BOONE!) clearly hopes to do for vermicelli rice noodles. This sleek new Vietnamese restaurant-a lean wood-paneled space decorated with sleeping Buddhas located on a dark stretch of Grand Street, is named for these thin silky alabaster threads (vermicelli rice noodles are called Bun in Vietnam), and they show up in almost every dish served on this "small plates" menu.

This fabulous Grand Street Vietnamese spot is serving up a four-course prix-fixe menu with specialty cocktail and dessert for just $45 per couple. It's the most affordable Valentine's Day deal we found in Manhattan for the second year running.

Last Friday night, the cliched expression "don't believe everything you read" took on a new impoliance for me. All week long I had coveted the online menu for a new Vietnamese small-plates restaurant named Bun Soho_- in fact, this was the most excited I had been by a menu in quite awhile. I often find that places seem to be doing variations ofthe same dishes (i.e. stuffed meatballs, black cod with miso, fish wrapped in pork, heirlooms salads depending on season, etc.)

Since severing ties with Bao 111 and Bao Noodles, chef Michael "Bao" Huynh has been building a bicoastal empire. He opened Mai House with Tribeca titan Drew Nieporent, and he established a West Coast presence at Hidden, the multiculti Santa Monica restaurant that's partly bankrolled by musician Warren Cuccurullo, formerly of Missing Persons and Duran Duran.

Bun -- Vietnamese vermicelli noodle based dishes (both cold and hot) --usually take a back seat to the more popular pho noodles in the United States. But, at Michael "Bao" Huynh's new restaurant collaboration with Warren Cuccurello, Bun Soho, bun are the show-stoppers on a menu that also offers small plates rife with seafood dishes and plenty of pork belly.

Bun in the oven A fistful of Wellbutrin is one way to treat seasonal affective disorder, but a bowl of warm carbs is an infinitely tastier alternative. Mac and cheese, long the preferred drug of choice, now has a worthy rival in bun rieu Mekong ($12) from Bun (143 Grand Sf at Lafayette St, 212-431-7999), Tony Lam's Nolita shrine to modern Vietnamese cuisine.

The hearts had a delectable rich meaty consistency while the tongue just tasted like cartilage with a bone in it-I really don't see why anyone would want to eat something that requires you to pull a large piece of cartilaginous bone out of your mouth each time you tal<e a bite.