Published May 10, 2011.

For those of us less enamored with the foundry-like temperature of a Louisiana summer, May is a time of regret. We will miss our sweaters. We will miss our brisk, scarf-wrapped walks. But, if you are anything like me, the thing that will be most missed is soup.

The summer has its virtues, to be sure. The Farmer’s Market will overflow with sweet peppers, eggplant, cucumbers and our precious Creole tomato. There will be languid nights and trips to some ox-bow lake. Yet, hot soup will pretty much be off of the menu. We may comfort ourselves with vichyssoise or gazpacho, but they are a poor substitute for bisque, stew or gumbo.

I have never been to Vietnam but I have it on good authority that it is also rather warm this time of year. Even with the steamy heat and monsoon rains, the Vietnamese are able to embrace hot soup. Pho, their national soup, is enthusiastically consumed year-round, by the cavernous bowlful. For the uninitiated, Pho is a clear chicken broth flavored with star anise, lemon grass, chilies and other robust, yet sweet flavors. Into this enthralling mixture is added thin rice noodles, Thai basil, mung bean sprouts and whatever meat the chef has on hand. It can be served with paper-thin slices of beef that cook in the near boiling stock, slices of tripe, or meatballs. For all the various ways in which it is served, Pho remains unmistakable.

Prior installments of The Good Feast have trumpeted the many small ethnic restaurants that Baton Rouge is blessed with. We can now add Kien Giang to that list (10450 Florida Boulevard). There are no less than five places to get Pho in town but the new entrant has a lot of other things going for it. Their Vietnamese Pancake (as it was described in the menu, I doubt its mother calls it that) seemed to be made with a sweet potato dough and resembled a cross between a crepe and an omelet. Within was a mixture of shrimp, mushroom and other stir-fried vegetables that, like Pho, balanced the sweet and savory with precise refinement. So, I do want to recommend Kien Giang to you simply on its own merits. Their cold, gossamer spring rolls are as good as any I have had in town and the rest of the menu was very good.

The changing of the seasons should prompt us all to reflect on what has come and what has gone, what we will miss and those things to which we will look forward. The coming of summer also reminds me that the warm comfort of soup may not be wholly lost to us as the black berries ripen on their thorny and vermillion-hued vines. We are fortunate to have such an eclectic variety of national cuisines in our small burg because they have not just brought us exotic flavors, they have also brought us different ways of thinking about the foods that we love. Maybe, if you ask nicely, they will seat you under an air-conditioning vent and you can slip on your favorite jacket to help ease into a new culture and its fascinating food.

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