AN NO - Vietnamesisk Street Food Roskilde

We had takeaway food, a Vietnamese beef baguette (Banh Mi Bo), rice noodle salad with marinated chicken (Bun Thit Ga Nuong) and a shared portion of fresh spring rolls with king prawns (Goi Cuon) which we asked to have without the chicken they otherwise normally add to the mix. Credentials: we are not Vietnamese, but we have been to Vietnam several times, have been to numerous Vietnamese restaurants in the UK and Copenhagen, and cook Vietnamese food at home from time to time. What characterised all the dishes at An No was a distinct lack of flavour and particularly fragrant herbs, which is perhaps the key ingredient that characterises properly made Vietnamese dishes, certainly noodle salads and baguettes. The vegetables in An No's rice noodle salad comprised almost exclusively iceberg lettuce(!) and carrot and had almost none of the fragrant herbs like mint and coriander that it should have had to add fragrance and freshness. I also missed the crunch from crushed peanuts (another of the features that help balance flavours and textures in authentically made Vietnamese salads). The chicken meat wasn't great either. As for the banh mi it was just dull - again a lack of herbs and heat, perfectly edible but nothing like what a good banh mi should be. Unsurprisingly, the bread was nothing like Vietnamese or French-style baguette, more like Danish bread roll. However, I don't hold that too much against them since good French style baguettes are seemingly impossible to come by in Denmark, but since it advertises itself as an authentic Vietnamese street food restaurant I had dared hope. I realise it can be unfair to judge a restaurant on its takeaway, but this was much too far from good to make me want to go try a sit down meal: I can only imagine that using Iceberg instead of herbs etc must be cost-saving measure, but it completely ruins the flavour. Where there should be an explosion of flavour in the mouth instead this was just a slightly soggy mess. Not inedible, but not worth paying for. I can make much better Vietnamese food than that at home. And one can find good Vietnamese food in Denmark, but I'm afraid probably only in Copenhagen and perhaps a couple of other places. District Tonkin in Copenhagen is very good and it does feel authentic (or at least it used to, I haven't been for a year or two).