If you take the El from Chicago's Loop to Evanston, you pass Argyle Street where a clutch of ramshackle restaurants serve up Southeast Asian food that is always potentially excellent. But the usual thuggery of transitional urban America makes things a little dicey, and when the flagship of the area, Pasteur, abruptly closed up shop last year, I cut down drastically on trips north for Vietnamese. Then, in the dead of winter, as if by magic, Pasteur reappeared in the aggressively non-threatening environs of North Michigan Avenue. A few blocks off the Miracle Mile, on a stretch of road with no Disney store as yet, my dining partners and I savored papaya salad, barbecue beef rolled in rice-paper with cilantro, basil, and mint, and squid paddling happily in a brown sauce. The prices had stayed low, the servers were still gracious to a fault, and the place was still intimate and charming -- only 15 tables. Once again caught in the spell of the Pasteur, we vowed we'd come back every night for a week. Oddly enough, we actually did it. The food verged toward the sublime, but I think we had it somewhere in mind that the small staff would start to greet us with knowing smiles, address us by name, ask us if we wanted to try something special -- something not on the menu -- or throw in a dessert or two. None of it ever happened. We might as well have been in town for the International Gasket Manufacturers convention. My only intimacy was a short conversation with one of the bus boys, while he was moonlighting next door in the White Hen Pantry. Alas, perhaps such communion only happens in the movies, or at Planet Hollywood, just down the street, where everyone is always on a first-name basis.

Epilogue: Still wandering in the desert of Chicago, Pasteur has moved back to Andersonville. Its new address is 5525 North Broadway, Chicago, IL 60640.