My confidence in this decision crystallized during a recent dinner at the Eden Center in Falls Church. As I recited my order at Truong Tien, a cozy Vietnamese restaurant inside one of the shopping center’s sprawling mini malls, it seemed like everything was sold out. I must have looked defeated, but the server was all smiles as she redirected me to one of the restaurant’s specialties, a noodle soup stained red with chiles and full of supple cuts of beef and pork. Sure, I’d have that. When it landed in a steamy haze of lemongrass, she circled back to make sure I had the right spoon for the job, then set off for another group of diners in need of her attention. I didn’t spend another moment thinking about what could have been.
