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LOVING LAN
Before moving to Santa Fe in 1990, I lived in San Francisco and regularly indulged in its exceptional Asian cuisine. I have also spent quite a bit of time in Vietnam. Although I love living in Santa Fe, one of my biggest disappointments is the lack of quality Asian restaurants here. So when I heard that an authentic Vietnamese restaurant [Lan's Vietnamese Cuisine] was opening, I had to give it a try. I love it!!!! I, like many others, have been there many times and have tried almost everything on the menu. This food is the real deal.
I would like to express my deep disappointment with your recent review of Lan's Vietnamese Cuisine [Total Pig, Aug. 9:
"Vietnamese in Santa Fe Village"
]. This is America, and you are entitled to your opinion, thank God, but if you make your living as a critic you should temper your judgement with a heightened sense of perception-you owe it to your readers. Your review smells of sassy judgementalism. If you could only notice the number of people who keep coming back to Lan's, it would tell you something. I can't wait for the expanded soup menu that I hear is coming this fall.
Thanks, Lan, we love your food!!!!!!!
Tom Fraizer
Santa Fe
CAPITOL FOOD
I was excited when I saw the food review headline for Lan's Vietnamese Cuisine, but that excitement turned quickly to confusion (Was this an architecture critique? A book plug?) and finally dismay. Clearly, Ms. Doland and I have not had the same experience at Lan's. As a devotee of Lan's cooking, I was ecstatic when I saw she had a new restaurant close to the capitol. I wasn't disappointed the first time there, or the eight or so times I've been back. The spring rolls do everything I want of them: They taste delicious, they don't stick to my fingers and the insides don't fall into the garlic sauce-I've no problem with their vital surface tension. Unlike Ms. Doland, the
cau lau
, pork tenderloin on special noodles, is a favorite of mine-but then, so is the
com ga
, the Vietnamese chicken dish, and
thin bo tron
, the Vietnamese beef salad. The vegetarian friends I took to Lan's liked their selections as well. I do miss those lettuce wraps she used to do, though, and I wish she'd put them on the menu.
It's true there isn't much room for tables at Santa Fe Village, but renting something as big as a Las Campanas closet in downtown Santa Fe isn't cheap, or easy. At least she's here, cooking good food at reasonable prices that we locals, and even tourists, can take out and eat, maybe at those stone benches along Don Gaspar that the city paid so much for years ago, or the Santa Fe River park tables. Or simply go early or late to beat the lunch rush, same as most of us do anywhere we go for lunch downtown.
And, excuse me, but what's the point of hating a building in a food review? I'm pretty sure Lan wasn't responsible for the conversion of Santa Fe Village. Was the point that Ms. Doland was predisposed to not like the restaurant because she didn't like the building it was in?
Jonelle Maison
Santa Fe
ONE MORE
Your listing of "Bad Times" books [Cover story, Aug. 2:
] left out one very good, very important one. It is a recently published evaluation of "The American Military Adventure in Iraq" by the chief Pentagon correspondent of the Washington Post, Thomas E Ricks. Ricks won Pulitzer Prizes while at the Wall Street Journal; he has covered US military activities all over the world. The content of his Iraq book is made totally clear by its title:
FIASCO
. In it, he briefly covers the aftermath of the first Gulf War and what transpired prior to the second Bush administration. Then he devotes the rest of the book to a detailed analysis of the justification for our invasion and why it has gone so terribly wrong. I feel sure that no Pentagon correspondent would give a book about the Pentagon's activities such a bluntly critical title if the vast majority of the upper-echelon civilian and military personnel whom he covers for his job did not agree with him.
Prentiss Childs
Las Vegas, NM
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