2 for $25: SEA Restaurant

(Credit: Katharine Sidelnik)

I frequently walk to SEA Restaurant — which serves Southeast Asian cuisine and Vietnamese pho (noodle soup) — from my house because the food and prices are fantastic, there’s never a wait, and the staff treats you like family. When my friend Sarah said she’d heard another friend also rave about the place and that she’d never been, I wanted to be the one to make the introduction.

The mood
There’s nothing fancy here, unless you want to count the glass-block entrance. Basic tables and chairs, Asian prints and statues. “It’s very Monroe Avenue,” Sarah says, “this blend of a college-town feeling in a big city.”

I like the informality. My favorite touch is the front-window curtains hung on PVC tubing wedged between the windows (although you can’t tell unless you accidentally knock it down).

The food
We saw Rice Porridge ($3) on the appetizer list and agreed that it sounded scary (we imagined a runny, bland broth) and that we had to try it. The only description on the menu was that it came with a choice of chicken, beef, pork or shrimp. Since we were planning on getting meat dishes, we chose shrimp. To our surprise, it was scrumptious — a thick, flavorful rice soup sprinkled with the perfect amount of black pepper.

This restaurant is where I discovered Pad Thai with Chicken (pictured; $7). I’ve sampled the dish at several restaurants since, and it has never come close to being as chock-full of ingredients as the heaping plate this place serves up. So my selection was made before I even walked through the door. The Pad Thai comes with a choice of chicken, beef, or pork and egg with rice noodles, onions, bean sprouts and peanuts. Sarah ordered Flat Rice Noodles ($7), served with a choice of chicken (that’s what she got), beef or pork, flat noodles that were wider than we’d ever seen, and mixed vegetables. We both ate until well after we were stuffed.

The menu offers a variety of pho, rice plates, bun (vermicelli), stir-fried noodles, meat and seafood entrees, and vegetables and tofu. Prices range from $5.50 to $9.50.

The drinks
The usual (coffees, teas, soft drinks, beer) and fun stuff like Chilled Oriental Fruit ($2.50) — with a choice of such tropical fruits as lychee, rambutan, logan or jackfruit over ice — and smoothies ($2.75) that can include strawberries, pineapple, mango, honeydew melon, coconut, avocado and jackfruit, as well as other tropical fruits (guanabana, durian and taro), mung bean (a type of bean sprout), green tea and Thai tea.

The damage: $21.95

Next time ...
If I’m honest, I’d say the Pad Thai with Chicken. But if I had to pick a Plan B, I’d go with the House Vermicelli Noodles ($7). It’s a combination of pork, shrimp and fried egg roll on top of vermicelli, a bed of lettuce and bean sprouts, topped with fresh mint and peanuts and served with house sauce or sweet peanut sauce.