Bún

November 4

Chandler Burr was just in Santa Fe, doing one of a series of scent dinners that he’s doing across the country, working with chefs who prepare meals to go with various perfumes and other aromas that he presents to guests. They seem to be going well. Next he’s off to Dallas and Mexico for some reason, but he was in town long enough for us to stop by Bún last Friday.
Bún is pronounced “boon” and is also the name for thin rice noodles. So it’s a little like naming a restaurant Phở (pronounced like the French word feu, or like fur if you don’t pronounce the ‘r’), which as you may know is a Vietnamese noodle soup and quite a common name for Vietnamese restaurants in the U.S. It’s the latest restaurant of Michael Bao Huynh, who also owns Bao 111 and is a partner with Drew Nieporent in Mai House.
I sampled a red wine I hadn’t tried, but mostly I drank crémant d'Alsace rosé while Chandler and I caught up and sniffed each other (I was wearing Boucheron Pour Homme, which I really like — it smells to me like grapefruit mixed with lavender — and he had a variety of scents sprayed on different parts of his forearm). We got surprisingly few stares.
Chandler’s fun to eat Southeast Asian food with because he doesn’t get creeped out by exotic things.
To wit:

What we ate:
King crab spring rolls with pork, water chestnut and nuoc cham (a sauce made with fish sauce — nuoc mam in Vietnamese — vinegar, sugar etc.)
Seven-spice duck hearts and tongue with basil, chile, lime and salt
wild boar blood sausages with pickled green papaya and spicy ginger sauce
braised guinea hen with ginger, home-style sticky rice and duck sausage
A roll of beef, bún, arugula, pineapple, herbs and cham sauce
Bún with shrimp, Berkshire pork belly, cucumber and herb salad
Phở with thin sliced steak, sweet breads and anise beef broth