By Bob MacDonald, 10/29/98

T & N RESTAURANT Where: 109 South Broadway, Lawrence Phone: 978-794-8226 Type: Vietnamese Hours: Daily, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Closed Wednesdays. Good choices: Egg rolls; spring rolls; chicken wings; ginger chicken dinner; sauteed shrimp with mixed vegetables rice plate; shrimp and crabmeat rice noodle soup; rice noodle beef soup (pho); and the sauteed jumbo shrimp dinner. Credit cards: None accepted. Access: Fully accessible. Get directions

As a small boy I was so traumatized by a kitchen experiment my mother conducted with tripe that I avoided it thereafter. Others share this phobia. Mention tripe, as I did to some colleagues, and the response is "eeeww!" This is, of course, an American reaction. While the rest of the world is more frugal, we want to savor our filet mignon and wastefully toss out the rest of the cow. At the T & N Restaurant I decided to start erasing my country's shame.

I was pleased to note that we were the only non-Asian clientele on our first visit, taking it as evidence that this Vietnamese is serving the genuine article and not just catering to the South Lawrence tourist trade. It's in a small storefront with a few vinyl-topped tables and a staff of only two or three. Such simplicity is sometimes a good sign: They're selling meals here, not atmosphere.

The restaurant is in a melting-pot neighborhood with St. Patrick's Church, the Hong Lac Market, and El Corte Magico beauty salon all within sight. We ordered appetizers as "Guantanamera" played somewhere in the background.

Freshness and delicacy sum up the dishes. Diners who want to spice up their meals can chose from bottles of soy sauce, hoisin sauce, and two kinds of chili sauce.

Vietnamese egg rolls ($2) were fully stuffed with a light wrapper fried to such crispness that you could hear the crunch when someone bit into one. Shredded pork spring rolls ($2.95) were an even lighter affair; they were wrapped in thin rice-paper rounds that were soaked until pliable and translucent, taking on the consistency of cabbage. Served chilled, they made a salad-like start to the meal and were great with chili sauce.

Chicken wings ($3) were plump and beautifully fried, with perfectly crisp skin. Their heritage seemed as much Louisville as Saigon, although they were served with ketchup (!), which was invented in Asia.

The menu's "rice plate" section lists meals that might be confused with fried rice. However, they didn't have the heaviness of American fried rice and contained more meat and seafood. A rice plate of sauteed shrimp with mixed vegetables ($5.50) consisted of a bed of light, small-grain rice topped with shrimp, along with bits of carrots, scrambled egg, and peas.

Sauteed beef with mixed vegetables ($5) from the "sauteed rice & egg noodles" section swam in a light, chicken-broth based sauce. The beef was thin, tender steak - not enough for the beef-eater in our group, this essentially being a noodle dish. The yellow noodles were delicate and tasty. The "mixed" vegetables turned out to be only broccoli that night, including some tender leaves.

T & N's dinner section (served after 2 p.m.) is more weighted toward beef, poultry, and seafood. Sauteed jumbo shrimp ($7.95) were surrounded by sweet and crunchy vegetables: broccoli, charred onions, and lettuce, and dotted here and there with cilantro. Enormous cucumber slices and tomato slices adorned the edge of the platter and were slightly warmed by the hot food.

Ginger chicken ($6.50), our favorite dish, had ginger flavor throughout - no hot spots - and sat in a sweet and peppery, beef-tasting sauce. Cucumbers and tomatoes decorated this dish as well.

Of course what would a Vietnamese restaurant be without soup? Pho, the noodle-beef version, has been called Vietnam's national dish. T & N has a whopping 34 soups, 13 of them phos. Many, of course, are variations on a theme, a basic stock to which you can add different ingredients. Soups are served with bean sprouts and fresh herbs, such as cilantro and mint.

Shrimp and crabmeat rice noodle soup ($5.50) had a suitably seafoody stock with lots of medium shrimp in their shells and strips of what we took to be artificial crabmeat.

Pho with well-done flank steak, tendon, and tripe ($4.50) featured a mildly beefy, pleasantly sweet broth. The flank was sliced thin and tasted like a well-cooked pot roast. We found no evidence of the tendon; perhaps the proprietors thought it too exotic for American tastes. The tripe was chewy, spongy, and slightly sweet, better than I remembered, maybe something I could learn to like. Maybe if my mother had had a Vietnamese cookbook ...