Good Thief – Modern Vietnamese

Good Thief is a new modern Vietnamese restaurant in Vancouver. Its from the same group that owns Anh & Chi next door. When I say new, the place is less than a week old when I visited (visited July 18; opened July 11). I really like the interior of this place and I could tell they paid a lot of attention to detail. For example, they have the name of the restaurant in tile on the floor. We were seated at a very nice spot at the end of the bar. The bar is also beautiful. Here was the menu for the evening:

The meal started with some complimentary snacks. Pickled veggies and taro chips. The pickling on the veg was really good. Perfect actually. The chips were good as well. Just a hint of seasoning. Not enough to overpower but enough to give them flavor.

We initially ordered beets to start but they want out so we started with the zucchini instead and escargot. The zucchini was good and the beurre blanc sauce that accompanied it was too. The side salad was really good and had a hint of Vietnamese flavors. The escargot was good, but could of used a bit more seasoning. There was a bit of heat in them and the puff pastry shell was absolutely delicious.

One theme I started to notice was the use of sauce in every dish, and the bartender confirmed my intuition that the chef must be French. He also pointed out correctly that Vietnamese food has a lot of French influence in it so it was a perfect pairing combining sauces with every dish. Anyway, the sauces were so good that we didn’t want to give them up. We ended up ordering a side of triple cooked fries to mop up the sauces.

These fries could be improved. For being triple cooked, they lacked crisp, and needed more seasoning. Also, the basil did not really come through. For the mains, we had bone marrow, arctic char and the steak.

The bone marrow was really good though there was not a lot of it. Although too much bone marrow results in fat overload, I felt this portion was way too small. Restaurants should be more conscious of selecting bones with more marrow. I appreciated the use of a local artisanal baker. The fish was well cooked and pretty good. Lastly, the steak. The sauce was incredible. It had a pho chimichurri on top (same as the marrow), and a demi glace made with pho drippings I believe. The sauce was extremely thick which shows how much care went into making it, and the flavors of pho broth came through nicely. The only complaint I had was that the beef was very chewy. Perhaps it was sliced wrong. I would of also liked a crust on it.

The restaurant was new so there was no dessert.

Overall, the service was really good especially since they were only a few days old. There were no real “opening” hiccups that I noticed. The food was good. As I have said many times, its hard to re-interpret and modernize many Asian dishes. I believe this place executed it well. I would go back to try other things and recommend.