Throw a 'roo on the barby Vietnamese style

Life been feeling bland and routine? Need a shot of something slightly out of the ordinary? Like, say, marinated alligator?

Say no more. At a point just north of the MLK/Rainier Avenue junction in Mount Baker, you'll spy a shiny new sign over a storefront restaurant of greater aesthetic pretension (dig the bamboo-forest wallpaper) and greater overall capacity than your ordinary Vietnamese place. But make no mistake: Even this big room, open just more than three months, fills to bursting on a weekend night, exploding with the raucous energy of dozens of Vietnamese families, talking and laughing and smoking like chimneys, and chomping happily on stir-fried kangaroo.

"We're a barbecue place. We specialize in exotic meats," explained our sympathetic waiter, the sole server that night whose command of the language enabled him to translate the culture shock of Pho Nuong to our tableful of (mostly) lily-livered Caucasians. No, he explained, kangaroos do not roam the streets of Ho Chi Minh City — but Vietnamese barbecue (they haul a mini-grill over to your table and you grill up your own meat) is a part of traditional Vietnamese fare.

So all around the place folks are knocking themselves out on venison, wild boar, rabbit, goat, bison, you name it. (For the fainthearted, there's also chicken, lamb and a pretty splendid-looking catfish, among other things.) A vast selection of appetizers, hot pots, fondues (you cook the meat in a vinegar broth at the table) and skillet suppers — stir-fried eels, anyone? — round out the list, along with an array of beers, wines, juices and French coffees.

It all looks expensive when you first open the menu, but it turns out to be quite affordable when you see that this food is meant for family-style sharing. (The food itemized below would probably feed four. I included it all because I couldn't resist describing it.)

It's not even close to a relaxing experience: You'll be grilling or dunking or adjusting the manic heat of the hot-pot flame depending on where at the table you're stationed, and the learning curve on how to assemble nearly every dish is high, especially if you're doing it through a language barrier.

But the reward is an evening of intrigue and cultural consciousness-raising. Not to mention a full-on fun-fest for that poor understimulated palate of yours.

Check please

Deep-fried prawn appetizer: "Some people like to eat the shells, some don't," explained our helpful waiter. In this preparation, woe to those who don't: The delicious fry-crust is outside the shell. Since this is the whole shrimp — head, eyes, the works — the squeamish might find themselves obsessively peeling and hacking before eating. For me, it worked better to just close my eyes and crunch.

Thailand-style hot pot (small): The steaming cauldron comes to your table filled with a potent broth. You doctor it up by dropping things in off an accompanying platter of fish, shrimp, beef, artichokes, celery, tomatoes and other exotica (including a leafy green and a spongy vegetable that our waiter insisted did not translate into English). Their flavors sure did, however, with the whole pot growing more complex at our bidding. Pros will know exactly when to drop in the meat and fish so as not to overcook. We were not pros.

Stir-fried alligator: Heaped on a platter, these 'gator nuggets were so thoroughly draped in a Thai currylike sauce I'm afraid I still have no idea what Ol' Chewy tastes like. (I'm told that's a good thing.) Still, the sauce was divine, pungent and complex, punctuated with fresh vegetables and served with crusty French bread.

Pho Nuong special grill on a griddle: The Big Production of the evening was this platter of raw beef, shrimp, squid and fish, delivered with rice noodles and fish sauce and assorted veggies for wrapping into rice-paper bundles once we'd grilled up all the ingredients. Great fun and a lovely munch, even if our waiter did bring us a different sauce than actually goes with the meal. "The other sauce is very sensitive," he said tactfully, sizing up our non-Vietnamese faces. It turned out to be a shrimp sauce, distinguished by what my untrained nose registered as the foulest (intentional) odor it had ever encountered at a dining table. Thus concluded my cultural exchange for the evening.

Itemized bill, meal for four

Deep-fried prawn appetizer $9.00

Thailand-style hot pot (small) $16.00

Stir-fried alligator $14.00

Pho Nuong special grill on a griddle $23.00

Tax $5.45

Total $67.45

Kathryn Robinson: kathrynrobinson@speakeasy.net