Where Vietnam meets Japan

Sa Sa brings the fresh, lively flavors of two cuisines to downtown St. Petersburg.

[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]

Among the sushi sold at the restaurat are tuna rolls, left and California rolls with smelt roe.

ST. PETERSBURG -- There's only one good thing about slogging through a Florida summer: Even October is the right time for a summer roll.

The magic combination of crunchy rice noodles, sparkling mint and springy shrimp that glisten through uncooked rice paper is a gift for all miserably hot seasons. And that's before you dip it into sweet hoisin, sprinkled with crushed peanuts and a splash of hot sauce that puts a little sriracha-cha-cha in your noonday step. That's the most fun your mouth can have without frying, something Vietnamese cooks and diners came to appreciate many summers ago.

It is also the perfect appetizer to introduce you to a cuisine ideally suited to our time and place, cooking with flavors that are almost always a playful jumble of hot, cool, sweet and bracing. Often, it's food you can eat with your hands -- and stuff with as much of the herb garden as you care to pick. That may be why we have such a wide selection of Vietnamese restaurants, from funky pho spots that sound, smell and taste like a floating market in the old country to restaurants that show off Eurasian style.

[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]

Translucent rice paper encasees noodles, shrimp, pork, lettuce, cucumber and mint to form a Sa Sa summer roll.

Downtown St. Petersburg, however, has been bereft of pho, bunh and summer rolls for many long, hot days since Mai's closed.

That has been remedied with the opening of Sa Sa, which falls between the extremes of Vietnamese restaurants and combines a modest selection of mainstream Viet cooking with Japanese entrees and sushi, another decidedly Florida-friendly cuisine. Sa Sa puts them smack in the middle of downtown, getting me right where I work. Doubling the Southeastern pleasures, Mai's old location on Central Avenue has at last been revived as Chiang Mai, which adds a few extra noodle and clay pot dishes to our menu.

The chance to lunch on sushi or bunh, the cool Vietnamese salad in a bowl, is welcomed by anyone looking for a meal of light, bright flavors. The dinner hour, as with most places outside Bay Plaza, is still sparsely patronized but take-out-on-the-way-home is picking up.

Cooking two cuisines well is always a challenge, and Sa Sa has hits and misses in both Vietnamese and Japanese.

Banh xeo is great fun here: Often described as a crepe or pancake, it's more of a light omelet made with bean sprouts and shrimp, which the eater fills with fresh basil and mint and folds into an enjoyable mess. Pho, the national noodle soup of winter, is made with a good broth but less than the ultimate seven kinds of beef treasured in traditional restaurants.

Bunh, the summer noodle dish and my favorite Viet bowl, needs more lettuce and greens and a bigger choice of garnish (although shrimp and chopped egg roll may be treat enough for you). The gap I'd most like to see filled is the absence of banh, the Vietnamese hoagies that put more flavor on a loaf of French bread than most Jersey sub shops.

On the Japanese side, my favorite is the top of the line matsu, which delivers a sampler of everything -- two pretty pads of sushi, handsome puffs of shrimp tempura and savory sushi in a bento box. Sure it's not cheap, but those lacquered boxes are so darned cute, it's worth getting by with a slice for lunch for a couple of days.

Sushi and sashimi are best ordered by the piece where you can see the creativity at the counter, like a clever hand roll, with punchy mackerel paired with slivers of cucumber. Although sushi or sashimi combinations offer better prices, you get less artistry, more humdrum. Indeed it takes a while for a sushi bar to determine what its patrons will support. Sa Sa doesn't stock sea urchin, my first choice, but it did carry white tuna, a rarity that went unappreciated.

If I were to assemble my own combination it would be a bowl of sunomono, cold fish and seafood with cucumbers in rice vinegar, followed by soft shell crab, the best thing to come out of the fryer. And maybe some miso soup, the sturdiest soy potion I've tasted.

[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]

Restaurant owner Mina Pham and crew offer two Asian cuisines at Sa Sa in downtown St. Petersburg.

Skip the yakisoba, stir-fried noodles with a little meat and too much soy and sliced red pepper; not very pleasing to the eye or the tongue. We'll just have to wait for a Japanese noodle shop to arrive with steaming bowls of soba and udon that are both hearty and delicate.

My experience with service has been mixed. The restaurant's largely family run, so servers can be cheerful, inviting and prompt and on occasion clueless and painfully slow, especially if someone's working double duty in the kitchen and on the floor.

Nonetheless, 2-month-old Sa Sa has already delivered fresh ideas to downtown St. Petersburg -- more vegetarian choices and a children's menu without chicken fingers are both welcome -- and extra style. If it only makes Vietnamese and Japanese a middling mainstream staple, that's a delight.

Sa Sa

• 27 Fourth St. N, St. Petersburg
• (727) 895-1493
• Hours: Lunch, 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Monday-Friday; dinner, 5 to 9 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday.
• Reservations: Accepted
• Details: Most credit cards; beer, wine; no smoking.
  

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