by Andrew Morrison | Foreign Restaurant Porn is a new Scout column that looks at a covet-worthy restaurant (from parts afar) each week and uses it to plug a hole – geographically or conceptually – in Vancouver’s own restaurant landscape. Last week we looked at Shed 5, a waterfront restaurant new to Melbourne, Australia. This week we pine for London’s Viet Hoa Mess.

What it is: Vietnamese | 78 seats | Casual, Affordable | Designed by VONSUNG

Where it is: Kingsland Rd. | Shoreditch | London | UK

Where we wish it was: In Gastown, perhaps replacing one of the tourist trap joints still fooling gullible cruise ship passengers out of their Euros. Alternatively, if it could squeeze closer to Gassy Jack Square, I wouldn’t mind seeing it supplant the garish, bizarrely-named Secret Location, which appears to have as much point and worth to the neighbourhood as a broken, $2 million stapler. Ideally, however, it would either land next door to Sea Monstr Sushi, in the location currently occupied by Terracotta, or in Guilt & Co underneath Chill Winston. The former has always felt more like a nightclub than a restaurant, and the only thing that I really like about the latter is its stage and board games (the food having no surplus of imagination). Both have sweet underground spaces (Viet Hoa Mess being wholly subterranean).

Why we wish it was there: Gastown could really use a Vietnamese restaurant. It’s a delightfully fractured cuisine with a whole range of outside traditions – French, Chinese, Khmer, Indian – influencing it in subtle and not so subtle ways. It’s also surprisingly health-conscious and not overly reliant on meat, which gels – I suppose – with Vancouver’s encroaching better-than-you dining ethos. And while there’s a great diversity of eateries in Gastown, I reckon 90% of the food is of Western stripe, plaid and polka dot. Let’s face it: L’Abattoir, Boneta, Cork & Fin, Wildebeest et al are cousins – albeit three or four times removed – and to add some some new blood to the mix would be a good and very tasty thing (thank you, The Diamond, for putting on your new sombrero). An advanced take on beverages would be a nice development, too. I’ve never tried Ruou De before and I hope to give it a whirl at some point in my life (similar to Japanese sake). With cocktails – paramount hereabouts – the sky’s the limit (think Nam Long Le Shaker in London and Xuxu in Auckland). The Vietnamese are also big on beer, which would appeal hugely to the clientele that frequents Gastown. And the cuisine, of course, lends itself beautifully to wine (I once paired a good, take-out beef pho with a glass of Oldfield Series Merlot and it knocked my socks off). But the real trick of it is that we’re a little bored with the afterthought packaging that Vietnamese restaurants are usually subjected to in Vancouver. Establishments like Phnom Penh and Pho Tan are attractive for what they serve, not for how they look. Wouldn’t it be great if one came along with an inspired design? Chau on Robson gave it a shot a few years ago, but it was off the mark, feeling more like one of those re-imagined, modernized McDonalds than anything new or remotely exciting. And food purists shouldn’t fret: a concentration on style doesn’t always mean a wholesale surrender of quality. Just because something is pretty doesn’t necessarily make it any less authentic. Here’s hoping someone gives it the old college try.

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Andrew Morrison lives and works in Vancouver as editor-in-chief of Scout, food columnist at the Westender, and National Referee & Judge at the Canadian Culinary Championships. He also contributes regularly to a wide range of publications, radio programs, and television shows on local food, culture and travel; collects inexpensive things; and enjoys rare birds, skateboards, cocktails, shoes, good pastas, many songs, and the smell of camp fires.