Picture this. You are given a badly scribbled map to your destination. You trek through rubbish-strewn streets, down dark alleys, up a few dirty staircases to a door with no sign. You knock three times, and a pane opens. You give the code name, and the door opens. Inside, the sour smell of citronella and the sharp pungency of chilli peppers greet you. You sit down, and a platter of alien vegetables and meats is presented. After an hour, you pay $20 and leave the way you came. Those were the original Vietnamese restaurants in Hong Kong. When boat people were respected as patriots, not criminals, and they could work in the factories. Where were they to eat? Without restaurant licences, some opened their rooms illegally to their compatriots so they could dine on their own food. How life has changed. Now restaurant moguls build glittering versions in Lan Kwai Fong, and chain operators serve watered-down versions for local tastes. Peace Garden has been around for 10 years, and it has made no compromises. The restaurant is plain, on the largish side (about 120 can eat here); there is a glass-panelled private room, where the plebs can stare at the relatively rich. Few Europeans come here; the clientele is made up mainly of Vietnamese, Chinese-Vietnamese and a large sprinkling of Japanese. But Peace Garden is such a friendly place (even the set meals have Chinese names like 'Happy Family For Six') that one must inevitably enjoy the food. The menu fills a booklet: 10 pages of unusual dishes. Of the seven we finally settled on, only two were a bit disappointing, three were astounding, the others almost as memorable. We decided against the three specials. The beef cooked in seven ways is seen everywhere, but is always predictable. Nor did we choose shrimp on sugar cane. Visitors may love it, but this is the Vietnamese equivalent of sweet-and-sour pork. The king prawns were really emperor prawns if those dished up at the next table were any indication - they were the largest we had ever seen. But we were more modest in our choice: shrimp cooked with peppermint. It looks banal, but the firmly-cooked shrimps have a spectrum of verdant tastes: peppermint and basil, parsley, shreds of bell pepper, and the inevitable lemon grass. Of our two failures, the first was a pot of 'pigeon and mushrooms cooked in fish sauce': it was bland and looked absolutely inelegant with the head of the poor bird sticking out of the soup. The minced cake fried in oil was just as terrible, being rubbery and greasy. The two eel dishes were the best. We had barbecued eel, which is served shish kebab-style on skewers. It is marinated in lemon grass, then deep-fried, drained of all oil, and served without a sliver of bone. The meat was juicy and tender, crisp on the outside, with a bit of fat under the skin. Eel soup was a surprise, too. Cooked in a broth of lemon grass, parsley, chilli peppers, tomato, celery and pineapple, it was a harmony of flavours and textures. Most unusual was Vietnamese shark's fin soup. At $108 for a large bowl, it raised questions about the quality of the fin. But the broth didn't need it to begin with. It was spicy-hot with what seemed to be a tomato paste - yet the pepper wasn't from chillies. The chicken curry came with French and garlic bread, to dunk in the mild sauce. Nothing is predictable in Peace Garden, for the most appetising descriptions can bring forth dross, while humdrum names can be exquisite. The price is worth the effort. Four of us not only stuffed ourselves but spent two hours arguing over the merits and ingredients. The bill came to an unlordly $901. For that, we demanded to know what gave the spice to the shark's fin soup, but were told it was a 'secret recipe'. PEACE GARDEN VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT 4 Hillwood Road, 1st floor, Tsim Sha Tsui; Tel: 2721-2747; Hours: Noon-midnight