A papaya isn’t really ready to eat until its skin turns rosy and the flesh inside blooms to a dense, sweet golden orange; in their unripened state, they will be hard, pale, and relatively flavorless. The Papaya on Pine Street, however, is green in name onlydays after its official opening, the clean, airy space was turning out fragrant, well-crafted Vietnamese dishes of astonishing quality and freshness.
Spring rolls ($6) and salt & pepper calamari ($9) are easy starter choices, but anyone willing to skip the deep fryer will be equally rewarded by the cho lon or White Tiger rolls (both $5). Cho lon bundles vegetables, fresh basil, mint, bean sprouts, and lettuce tightly in thin, chewy rice paper; the White Tiger does the same but adds sweet steamed prawns and thin-sliced pork loin. The house salad ($3) is nicely executed, but an appetizer salad of fresh calamari tossed with chili peppers, Asian celery, and shrimp paste in a lime nuoc mom dressing ($8) is well worth the extra five bucks, with its generous portion of chili-flecked squid, clean, ocean-tangy and still translucent from its steam bath.
Entr饳 come with the diner’s choice of steamed rice and a side salad, or rice vermicelli, mint, bean sprouts, and shredded romaine. With rice, the grilled lemon grass chicken ($9 at lunch, $12 at dinner) is basically a more refined, stripped-down teriyaki: tasty, but less intriguing than other menu items, like the caramelized eggplant in sweet garlic pepper sauce ($8, or, at dinner, served spicy with whole trout for $20), and coconut curry chicken with asparagus, zucchini, and green beans ($14 lunch and dinner). “Catch of the Sea” ($14 at dinner) tosses pan-fried tiger prawns, calamari, and scallops with snow peas and sweet peppers on a bed of warm rice noodles; the mariner’s noodle soup offers a similar seafood kick in a consomm頢roth with crab claws for a mere $8.
Even after appetizers, a starter salad, shared entrees, and crispy banana tempura (the only dessert on offer; you have to ask for it), it’s hard to feel the typical guilt of the overindulgent: Everything at the Green Papaya is prepared with such a light and skillful hand, the only regret is for all the dishes left untried.
