The first thing you notice on entering Tay Do is the bright green, almost fluorescent walls. The second thing you notice, possibly a couple of milliseconds later, is the pair of giant plastic shellfish adorning them. Elsewhere in the sparsely decorated room are a couple of traditional Vietnamese paintings and some handmade posters with photographs of the house special of ‘rainbow jelly’, the brightly coloured dessert clashing alarmingly with the surrounding green.
On the Kingsland Road delta, where more than a dozen Vietnamese restaurants vie for custom, there’s a need to stand out from the crowd. Tay Do seems to know this.
At night the place heaves with a mixture of Vietnamese locals and tight-jeaned Shoreditch types, but on this breezy Tuesday lunchtime only a couple of tables are busy. The smiling young waiter is hardly rushed off his feet.
Opting for once to branch out a bit and avoid the usual spring rolls, I order a starter of lamb cutlets with chilli and lemon grass. And they’re delicious: beautifully succulent and delicately spiced. However, I suspect Gordon Ramsay would have a few words to say about the strips of soggy lettuce garnish.
For my main, I choose a traditional Vietnamese ‘bun’, a mixture of vermicelli rice noodles, bean shoots and vegetables with prawns and fish sauce - and about ten cloves of garlic, judging from the strong whiff that comes from it. It’s as delicious as the first course and there’s lots of it, too. I only get about three quarters of the way through it before I have to give up.
But before I leave, I know there’s one more thing I just have to do. I summon the waiter, smile, point to the wall and say something I’ve never said before.
‘Er, one rainbow jelly, please.’
The whole lot came in at around a tenner. Give it a go.
Tay Do, 65 Kingsland Road, E2
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