Express October 13, 1995
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Best Food Art

I feel about Berkeley neighborhood restaurants the way Calvin Trillin does about hometown hamburgers: you don't really care about food (or roots) if you don't think yours is the best. In my neighborhood, the best is Mama Lan's Vietnamese Restaurant. Mama Lan used to cook at Gertie's Chesapeake Bay Cafe, but she's defined her own style with this elegant Vietnamese fare: soft-shell crab, pasta, salmon, the world's best spring and imperial rolls. And if you won't grant her best neighborhood restaurant, you'll have to concede best sides: for example, an elegantly carved zucchini soft-shell crab to accompany your real crabs, a zucchini salmon with your salmon.

Mama Lan is an artist with food, rivaling the chef at Flying Saucer in San Francisco. And there's a special pleasure in eating at Mama Lan's , because it's across the street from what used to be my neighborhood's best restaurant, Lalime's. But Mama Lan's has as good or better food at one third the price and one fifth the pretension.

1316 Gilman Street, Berkeley
-John Boe-