Falansai

The son of a Chinese refugee opened a Vietnamese eatery and cheekily named it after his father’s mispronunciation of “français.” It’s mostly a comfort-food spot from Vietnam’s Chaozhou region but it also has an experimental “Globe Trotter Pho” menu, including a chocolatey Mexican mole poblano pho; a garlicky Peruvian aji amarillo pho; and a Southeast Asian variety with Szechuan peppercorns, galangal (spicy ginger), and dried shrimp. None of the pho bowls use MSG. As you enter, you’ll see a lightbulb hanging in a pagoda-shaped birdcage and hear loungey French music that quietly fills the sparsely decorated interior. At lunch, you can slurp traditional pho and munch on Dad’s shrimp roll, which tastes like a crab cake and has a crispy tofu-skin wrapping. At dinner, tender little cubes of filet mignon come to your table fresh from the wok.