We rang to book a table for dinner at Loong Kee Café and the reservation was accepted. When we arrived and announced the booking to a member of staff, he looked at first bemused and then slightly hunted. The fact that there was one table available was, I think, a complete coincidence.

Loong Kee is on that stretch of Kingsland Road some call Little Hanoi. Approaching from Old Street, it is beyond most of the other Vietnamese cafés and just before The Geffrye Museum.

An interesting outing would be to visit the English middle-class domestic interiors from Elizabethan times onwards displayed in the almshouse that houses the museum - followed by a big bowl of pho (steamed rice noodles with beef in soup) at Loong Kee.

In the evening the plainly decorated room with canteen-style unadorned wooden furniture is packed with groups of young people appreciating the sprightliness and healthiness of the inexpensive food (most dishes £5 or under) and the economical BYO for beer and wine.

I wanted to try banh cuon thit as apparently this rice flour pancake rolled around, in this instance, minced pork and mushrooms, is not easily found and is a speciality of Loong Kee.

In looks and slippery texture it is similar to the dim sum called cheung-fun but is even more unwieldy when approached with chopsticks. A sweet crunchiness was sprinkled on top which seemed like a commercial rendition of the traditional fried shallots. It is worth ordering, not least for leading you towards the list entitled Special Vietnamese Dishes.

One of these was cha chien, a Vietnamese sausage which my friend Dee thought that Walls should investigate as a potential new line.

The soups we tried, wonton with vegetables and hot and sour tofu, were both generously served (at £2 each) and seemingly made from scratch in-house.

Softshell crab with salt and chilli was better here than in far grander places where I have eaten it. Slow cooking breaking down the connective tissue in meat was perfectly demonstrated in Vietnamese stewed beef served in a covered clay pot. The meat, bathed in a rich reddish sauce, was softer than the most tender fillet. Rice and noodle assemblies were workmanlike, better for quick one-dish meals when eating alone.

We asked for the pak choi with garlic that we saw our neighbours eating and were pleased to have a huge heap of some cooked but still chewy greenery along with the salad and fresh herb garnishes of other dishes. A big bowl of dipping sauce is put on each table and fish sauce, soya sauce and a pot of crushed chillies are also provided.

Lithe staff dressed in mildly covetable red cheesecloth shirts are less impassive and impatient than at some places in Little Hanoi.

One of my reactions to finding a restaurant I really like is to want to move house in order to have it on the doorstep. Are property prices coming down in Shoreditch? Probably not.