[Photos: Maggie Hoffman]

You could easily spend an hour perusing the menu at Vietnamese spot Nha Trang, which is why we had to go straight for something called a combination plate ($9.50)—the better to try even more. Our dish came with barbecued pork slices, pork paste, and a loose beef sausage, with two tiny spring rolls and shrimp paste roll on sugar cane, all over a bed of vermicelli garnished with peanuts, scallions, and the like. (Whew.)

There's a lot to explore here, and most of it's excellent: the beef is just sweet enough with a light crust; the pork is nicely cooked so that the meaty parts are tender and the fatty parts, melty; the spring rolls are crisp and light and so fresh they burn your mouth and their innards steam.

While the Com Muc Xao Sa Ot ($5.50) sounded exciting to us—squid, chili, and lemon grass—the squid tentacles were too chewy (you're still chewing three minutes after biting one, chewy) to appreciate those flavors; but for five bucks, it's still pretty satisfying.

Nha Trang

87 Baxter Street, New York NY 10013 (map)
212-233-5948