Public Service Annoucement - Here at Watusi!, we care about our readers, and today, we took a bullet for all two of you. Right before Christmas, I noticed there was some action in the empty store front next door to the Yum Yum house. As far as I can remember, that place was empty for as long as I've lived here in San Francisco.

I crossed Valencia to see what was going in. The windows were mostly covered, but there was a promising sign saying that there's a new Vietnamese place coming soon. "Cool," I said, startling a woman who was walking past me with her shih tzu. If it's next door to Yum Yum it had to be great, even though I thought it was strange that someone would open a new Vietnamese place so close to both of the Sunflower locations.

Today, Andy and I decided to check things out at the Thanh Tam II. It was time. The place was empty, but it's new, so we didn't think much of it. We went, we sat at table number 10, and were handed menus with the precision and skill of a surgeon. After that, things started to change.

The menu, while pretty, was muddled. The people who wrote this looked like they weren't actually sure they wanted to be a vietnamese restuarant. There were listings for Won Ton Soup, Pot Stickers, and a few other dishes that didn't really seem to fit. In fact, they even had a separate section called "Vietnamese Style Dishes," that was separate from the standard sections of Beef, Seafood, Pork and Chicken. After deliberating for a while, and deciding we weren't interested in the "Grilled Beef in the Slices," we ordered.

"Someone's not sure what their job is," Andy said, right after we were delivered two sets of silverware, but only one set of chopsticks. "I guess we're supposed to share these."

What the hell, we figured. It's a new place, let's order a little extra. We got the pot sticker appetizer. It was a strange thing to see on a menu. Neither of us had ever seen them at a Vietnamese place, and with good reason. I'm pretty certain these things were fresh out of the deep frier from the freezer at Costco. They weren't soft on the top and crispy, golden brown on the bottom. These were a greasy and chewy deep-fried mass of bubbled skins and oozing goo, so hot that they caused unstoppable pain when I bit slightly off center into one of them. Thankfully, there was no flavor in them whatsoever to slow us down. "Eh, mistakes happen," I said as I took a sugary bite out of my lemonade.

Andy's Vietnamese-style deep fried catfish clay pot showed up. There was more bubbling goo. This time, it was adhered to some scared looking fish bones and skin. I admit, I only tried one piece, but after digging through layer after layer of caramelized hoisin sauce, I didn't find any actual fish. I didn't have time to look for any more fish. I had my Grilled Chicken and Egg roll noodle to deal with. Again, the cooks managed to mistake the bottle labaled "flavor" with an empty bottle of absolutely nothing. I counted exactly three whole cilantro leaves in the bowl with a bunch of broken and undressed noodles, sticky sweet sliced meat of some kind, and more deep fried something or others that I can only guess was the Egg Rolls. Maybe these people were trying to kill us. It was the only thing I could imagine.

The check came, delivered with two attractively placed fortune cookies. Fortune Cookies at a Vietnamese restaurant? It's true. Fortunately, they, too, managed to not affect our opinion of what had just happened to us at all. While we were waiting, for our waittresss to return to steal our money, we signaled a potential customer that his money, and his arteries were better abused elsewhere. We shook out heads, and pointed out the door. "Go across the street," Andy said, as our waittress continued watching an old Ben Affleck daytime movie at the other end of the room.

I can't emphasize this enough. Next time you're near the corner of 17th & Valencia, no matter what you do, how hungry you are, or how much you've had to drink, do NOT eat at Thanh Tam II. Every part of you will thank you.