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Showing appreciation is something Hong Ngo and Paul Huynh do well. The husband-and-wife owners of The Green Papaya, a Vietnamese restaurant in Los Gatos, have been doing something special for their regular customers over the three years they have operated their unusual and elegant eatery on N. Santa Cruz Avenue. This Christmas season, as they begin another year of operation, they are offering a free dessert during the month of December to everyone who dines with them between 5 and 7 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday.
"The dessert is very popular," says Ngo, an accomplished chef, as she describes the banana flambé she has taught her staff to prepare.
The bananas are sliced and coated with a thin layer of batter, then coated with honey and rum. The thin coating turns crispy when the rum is ignited just before serving. "The flaming really brings out the taste of the banana," she adds.
In celebration of their third anniversary, Ngo has designed some new dishes. "I try them out on our regular customers," she says. "When they're happy, I put them on the menu." Instead of replacing older dishes that customers consider their favorites, she ends up adding to the menu, which increases in length with the additions she offers about every six months.
The latest anniversary items include a new appetizer, three new salads, two noodle dishes and two entrees to select from the growing list of popular signature dishes.
The new appetizer is Ha Long flat cakes—or pan-fried green onions—served with a curry dipping sauce for $9.75 at lunch. (Prices quoted are luncheon prices. The same items are slightly more on the dinner menu.) The salads are Saigon salad with poached shrimp, shredded mango, palm hearts, cucumbers and carrots with a light vinaigrette dressing ($8.95); Hue salad with grilled chicken, shredded cabbage and crispy won tons with sesame dressing ($8.50); and spicy beef salad—grilled beef with garlic, ginger and chili with cabbage and crispy won tons ($8.95).
The new noodle dishes are Los Gatos beef and chicken noodles—pan-seared egg noodles with chicken and beef mixed with vegetables ($8.75); China Beach noodles—pork sausage with tomato sauce, vegetables and mushrooms ($8.75); and Santa Cruz noodles—a combination of tofu and vegetables ($8.75). The two entrees are Mekong River prawns, which has "flavors to tickle your tongue" ($17.25) and clay pot Cam Ranh prawns, in which jumbo freshwater prawns are marinated with a special tomato/soy sauce with sugar and black pepper, then put in an olive oilglazed pan and seared on both sides. They are then put in a clay pot—made in Saigon—with onions for 10 minutes. "The pot simply makes the food taste better," says Ngo. They are served with steamed rice and baby bok choy ($17.50).
Besides running their restaurant, Ngo and Huynh hold positions in the computer industry. They live in Saratoga with their children—Catherine, 3, and Phillip, 13.
Ngo maintains supervision of the kitchen, developing the menu and overseeing a cooking staff of four. The staff for the front of the house has grown to five, helped in part by wine expert Anna Shipley, who is responsible for a wine list that concentrates on Napa Valley and local Santa Cruz Mountain selections. "With the economy the way it is, we've had everybody applying for jobs here. I wish we could hire them all," Ngo reflects.
The Green Papaya, 137 N. Santa Cruz Ave. in Los Gatos, is open for lunch Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday until 4:30 p.m. Dinner is served 59:30 p.m. The restaurant is closed Mondays. For more information, call 408.395.9115.
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Photograph by George Sakkestad