Every month there is usually one dish that refuses to leave my brain. Not the most expensive thing. Not the most elaborate thing. Just the thing that keeps resurfacing days later, nudging aside newer meals and reminding you who actually won the month.

This month, it was nem cua bể, the Hai Phong style crab spring rolls, at La Nhau Viet Kitchen & Bar in Ottawa’s ByWard Market.

A friend had read an enthusiastic online review, which I decided to follow as a guide. Normally, I prefer making my own mistakes, but this seemed like a reasonable exception.

One of the first dishes to arrive was the spring rolls. I thought little of it. Spring rolls rarely announce themselves as the best thing you will eat all month. Then these arrived.

First, they weren’t rolled. They were square, cut into triangles, looking less like spring rolls and more like somebody had given geometry homework to a deep fryer. The exterior was uniformly golden and impossibly crisp, producing the kind of crunch that causes conversations to pause momentarily.

Inside was a filling that sounded dangerously busy on paper. Crab meat, pork, egg, glass noodles, carrots, jicama, black fungus, onion and cilantro. This is the sort of ingredient list that often reads better than it eats. Here it worked beautifully. Every bite managed to be rich without becoming heavy and complex without becoming confused.

The carrots and jicama brought a subtle sweetness and freshness. The crab added depth. The pork provided richness. The glass noodles somehow held the whole operation together. Then there was the nuoc cham, that magical Vietnamese dipping sauce where sweet, salty, sour, and tangy somehow agree to stop fighting and work together. It performed its usual miracle of making everything brighter, sharper, and more interesting.

The cruel thing about a dish like this is not just how good it is, but how it changes everything that comes after. Spring rolls will still be ordered, still be served, still be fine. But fine is no longer enough. Most will lose. And this one, unexpectedly, did not.

Hai Phong crab spring rolls from La Nhau Viet Kitchen & Bar, at 108 Murray Street, Ottawa, ON