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So, once again, it's out with the cleft sticks and on with the pith helmet for a journey into London's nether regions. One of the occupational hazards of being a restaurant critic is that you occasionally get reports of some "divine" little out-of-the-way place that you simply have to try. Okay, it may be a little off the beaten track, but it's worth the effort. Like a truffle hound, you are duty bound to set off in search of hidden treasure.

In this case, the destination is a Vietnamese takeaway in deepest, darkest Hoxton. Song Que has been getting rave reviews from the locals ever since it opened three years ago, though, I must say, I'm always a little suspicious of that kind of hearsay. In my experience, when a person grabs you by the elbow and tells you that their local Chinese is "the best in London" what they often mean is that it's better than the other two Chinese restaurants within a 100-yard radius of their house.

Song Que certainly isn't much to look at. There's a scrawled notice above the door saying "please use other door" and the first thing you notice on stepping over the threshold are the pale green walls. Call me a traditionalist, but pale green is not a good look for a restaurant. Isn't that the colour you go when you eat a bowl of Vietnamese beef noodle soup containing sliced rare steak, well-done flank, tendon and tripe? Funnily enough, that's precisely what the waiter plonked down in front of me shortly after I sat down. I hadn't ordered it and was about to send it back when my companion, an American ex-pat who feels personally responsible for his country's foreign policy dating back to 1945, reached over, put his hand on mine, and said, "No. We're going to have to eat it."

I couldn't face it, but he attacked it heartily, nodding and smiling at the Vietnamese waiter who was hovering over my shoulder and occasionally giving him the thumbs up. I started with some sesame prawn toast (mediocre), then, after my friend's soup had been cleared, we slowly worked our way through some grilled beef wrapped in betal leaf (not bad), duck with pineapple (quite good), stir friend chicken with black bean sauce and chilli (middling), beef with satay sauce and onions (chewy), a bowl of fried noodles with bean sprouts (excellent) and a bowl of special friend rice (greasy). I have to confess, it didn't taste any different from my local Chinese takeaway in Shepherd's Bush, but you couldn't argue with the price. What we'd eaten could have fed an entire Vietnamese village for a week, yet it only came to £31.30 (including tip).

My mother always told me that the sign of a good ethnic restaurant is the presence of other people of the same ethnicity eating in it--"They know, you see"--and, according to that test, Song Que must be outstanding. With the exception of a middle-aged homosexual couple on our left, the only other people in the restaurant were Vietnamese. This particular part of Hoxton--Kingsland Road--is sometimes referred to as "Little Vietnam" and there are similar restaurants stretching all the way to De Beauvoir. Yet Song Que was clearly the locals' favourite. The proprietor's wife--a nice, friendly woman called Anh Pham--told me that the place gets so crowded on a Sunday they have to turn people away.

As we were leaving, I noticed a rickshaw parked to the left of the door. The proprietor's wife happened to be leaving at the same time and I suggested to my American friend that he might want to offer her a lift in this contraption to assuage his neo-colonial guilt. He smiled at the proprietor's wife and whispered to me that he was too stuffed to get it up to running speed.