In terms of my criticisms above - the kitchen was definitely more efficient early on when we first arrived, though we were one of the first tables in for the evening. By later on when they were full, dessert took well over half an hour after we ordered it to arrive. The waitresses are as friendly and helpful as they were on our previous visit. The room is as garish as it was, possibly more so - my companion described it as “looking like the inside of an Indian taxi cab”. We could have done without the blaring hip-hop music that played throughout the evening, but that’s us, most of the crowd seemed to be into it.

The food - leaps and bounds better. We tried all different dishes - I’m not sure if any of the same dishes were still on the menu (I think we saw the coconut filled with curry pass by at one point). And, most items on the menu can now be ordered “as is” or at three different levels of picante. We ordered both of our main courses at level three, just to see. According to our waitress, those were always available, it just used to be printed only down in the corner of the menu rather than having a symbol next to each dish that could be altered to suit tastes, which have now been added. Menu descriptions also seem to be shorter than I remember them, a good thing.

We started off with a tom ca cua - shrimp, fish, and shiitake mushroom soup that was rich and tasty, and served with a side of freshly ground chilies to spice it up to order; and muc chien bo - fried calamari, but not the usual squid rings, in this case, sections of thick tentacles marinated in ginger and curry, in a crisp batter, with three different dipping sauces - a mildly spicy tomato, a sour lime, and an apple based sauce - delicious!

For main courses, we had an order of thit lon nam, a five-spice, lemongrass and garlic marinated pork saute served in a pineapple shell with a side of sticky rice (the rice was okay, but could have been a bit more flavored, and/or a bit more “sticky”) - at level three on the picante scale it was noticeably spiced with chilies, though not what I’d call hot, but enough to provide a balance to the sweet and salty flavors of the dish that had been unbalanced in the dishes we’d tried the previous time. The other dish, mien thit ga, a chicken breast in an oyster and orange sauce, for which the level three picante seemed to be non-existent, but it was still very good. These were definitely far better than anything we had last year, and a much prettier presentation of each.

Desserts, on top of being slow, were disappointing, especially given how good the rest of the meal had been. The “highly recommended” banana dessert turned out to be a sort of mushy banana wrapped in something vaguely coconut-y, and then in a sort of baked crepe, cut in half, and topped with a huge wheel of spun caramel sugar that served no purpose other than being in the way; and a dome shaped ice-cold ginger flavored marshmallow topped with dark chocolate sauce that was about as interesting as that sounds. We should have gone across the street for coffee and excellent bakhlava at El Manto…

On the whole, definitely a step up from our previous visit, and Green Bamboo is back on our radar for further visits.

Paz