Café Lang Thang in Over-the-Rhine, from the proprietors of Findlay Market’s Pho Lang Thang and Gateway Quarter’s Quan Hapa, offers Vietnamese street-style food that won’t drain your wallet — even if you dine with them once or twice a week (… or sometimes three times, let’s be real); nothing on the menu is more than $8.
Located on Race Street, less than a block north of Central Parkway in the old Enzo’s location, the unassuming Café Lang Thang blends in with its neighbors, set apart only by a few sparsely painted decals on the windows.
The small space feels open, with exposed ceiling beams, and the dining area has enough seats — mostly stools — for more than 20 people. One table seats six comfortably and the rest of the dining area is rounded out with small two- or three-person tables and an area of seating at the bar.
Along with a concise breakfast and lunch menu, Café Lang Thang sells a mix of Asian foods, condiments and snacks along the entrance wall leading up to a cooler of interesting bottled and canned beverages; if you don’t want a Coke, grab a can of FOCO brand tamarind or roasted coconut juice. They even have a bakeshop, featuring sweets from the owners’ mother’s recipes.
The lunch menu, though on the small side, is full of goodies to satisfy everyone, including vegetarians. They have a P.B.J. ($5) with your choice of white or wheat bread for the kid in you (or for the one that you brought), and a choice of four banh mi sandwiches between $6 and $8: roasted sirloin, Xiu Mai (Vietnamese style meatballs), roasted cauliflower or madras curry chicken salad. My dining partner and I settled on the roasted sirloin and cauliflower banh mi. We also ordered the sticky rice of the day ($4) from the breakfast menu.
For starters, their soup and salad menu features items such as squash salad ($4) dressed with soy vinaigrette and a Togarashi Caesar ($6), topped with crispy noodles and a ginger-anchovy dressing. Since it was bone-chillingly cold outside, we got an order of the crab and asparagus soup ($4).
Their drink menu boasts almost as many options as the food menu. Customers can order anything from a limeade to Vietnamese coffee. After trying Pho Lang Thang’s coffee, I was confident in Café Lang Thang’s mastery of the Saigon Phin drip coffee ($3.50), hot or iced, with or without sweetened condensed milk. (I ordered mine with less condensed milk.) When summer comes around (or maybe when we’re free from the polar vortex), I want to try one of their flavored limeades ($4): strawberry coconut or blueberry lychee.
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2014.
