| rev:text
| - This is why I have stopped eating Chinese food and become a Vietnamese food addict...
I have eaten here at least 15 times since they've re-opened and have become quite friendly with Sarah and Bill, the English names of the owners. Bill is a master chef and I am starting to understand why I like Vietnamese cuisine now where before, I just knew that I liked it better than Chinese.
First off...the Pho. They really don't serve any seafood pho and I've come to realize by eating at other Vietnamese places that even though I love shrimp, it tends to make a rather flavorless pho and if you used a beef or a chicken base, it would overpower the seafood. So beef pho just makes sense. Their pho is terrific. I found it more useful to get one of the more standard pho rather than the 'spicy' and spice it myself. The thing I've learned is to taste the pho broth before I hit it with any of the toss-ins or sriracha. They seem to sell a lot of pho ga (chicken soup), but I haven't tried that...it would be hard for them to beat my mom's authentic penicillin. I will point out that their Sour Shrimp soup was fantastic but it's not a pho.
Next - their bun...It's rather simple and plain - noodles with meat of choice (or shrimp/shrimp paste), optional peanuts and egg rolls, accompanied by the sweet fish sauce. The trick I learned here is that you put the chilies and/or sriracha and/or hoisin sauce into the fish sauce and mix it up and then dump it over the bun and toss it all with the fork and spoon. Without sriracha or chilis, bun is something any child would love. This is the absolute safe choice for anyone eating Vietnamese for the first time.
Next - their broken rice...Again, it's rather simple and plain - meat of choice accompanied by rice, sliced pickled carrots and green papaya and surprises not on the menu, an egg, mushroom quiche type concoction that is called xeo (not clear on the spelling here) and some thinly sliced salt pork. The first time I got this, I just consumed and the second time, I started asking about the things I was eating. Clearly there is some genius here. Again, the trick here is to mix the chilis and/or sriracha into the fish sauce so you can distribute it more evenly throughout. There are a wide array of flavors, all very delicate and much more enthusing than any sauce drenched Chinese offering. Each time I order a broken rice dish, Sarah tries to substitute the barbecue pork which I absolutely love but it defeats my intent to try something different each time.
I have since discovered that Bill makes vietnamese pancakes (quite tasty) and ox-tail pho (probably too fatty for my tastes). The pancakes are easily the most messy things to try to eat wrapped in a lettuce leaf with cilantro and dripping fish sauce. Utensils clearly don't work here.
Here's a tip...sit close to the table and don't wear a new clean shirt. On the plus side, none of it is greasy so it won't permanently stain but between pho noodles, bun noodles, drippy pancakes, it's hard not to leave soiled and happy.
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