Hoi An - Tribeca

Hoi An is a port city in Vietnam where Japanese and Chinese trading boomed in the 16th and 17th centuries. That's cool, right? Do you like it when I tell you peripheral things about the restaurants I go to? Someone is thinking logically there, because--big surprise--it's a Vietnamese restaurant with Japanese traits.

The atmosphere was really nice here: small, candle-lit, open kitchen, and dark wood furnishings. Friendly staff and a comprehensive menu, albeit a little expensive.

We started with an appetizer sampler of mushroom fritters, edamame, spring rolls, and fish fritters. Each shelled item came with it's own delightful sauce making it a flavorful introduction to the meal. The spring rolls were crispy and flaky with a crumbling assortment of veggies and shrimp inside. The fish fritters weren't too fishy tasting, but a bit tough and chewy. The mushroom fritters were also a little firm, but not harsh--I enjoyed them the most of the four. Edamame is edamame is as good as sucking beans out of a pod can be.

For the main course we had a seafood hot pot. A generous amount of leafy greens, noodles, scallops, shrimp, squid, and tofu encircled a well of what I deemed to be soy-based broth.

Usually, I am not a fan of going to a restaurant and being charged to cook my won meal, but I made an exception here since I was in good company and in the mood for seafood. For newbies: a hot pot meal entails dipping the various ingredients into the broth in order to cook it to your liking and combine with other ingredients as you wish--the entire pot is served on a mobile hot plate to keep the broth at high temperature.

All of the ingredients tasted fresh and there was no uneasy feelings of undercooked seafood blunders. My tactic in shoving a large portion of everything all into the broth at once proved successful as the noodles formed a edible netting around certain items in order to create a tangle of brothy seafood. Sound appetizing?

The meal as a whole was great. The servers even scouted our burner once in a while to make sure we weren't boiling our broth or accidentally turning it off completely in my case. The hot pot was $23 which is expensive, yes, but not bad in terms of this sort meal. Throw in a few Brooklyn Ales along with the appetizer plate and the meal came to around $50. For two people, that's a lot, but worth it if you're looking for a nice date or an interesting meal.

135 West Broadway between Duane and Thomas St., New York, NY 10013, 212 233 1339, www.hoian-nyc.com