| rev:text
| - I came to Montreal with the intention of ONLY eating Canadian food during the brief few days I was there. This meant: Poutine and anything made from animals.
This extensive list obviously excludes Asian food, for which I have high standards of authenticity (as opposed to most Western food, which just needs to be delicious), and which feels silly to seek out when one is not in New York or California... or Asia.
Unfortunately we found ourselves starving on the extremely touristy Rue Sainte-Catherine. I don't mean museum-touristy, but shopping-at-American-Eagle-touristy - a far more grim situation. This section of the street is lined with Thai and Vietnamese restaurants. Finally I gave in, giving some internal excuse of "Well Vietnamese food has heavy French influence considering the colonization and all... maybe via syllogism, the Vietnamese food won't suck."
We randomly chose Thai & Pho because reading "soupe tonkinese" everywhere on such a cold day was making my mouth water, and because it was on a corner and it's always nicer to dine on a corner. Yep, some precise decision making. The intent was to just get something small to share before moving on to bigger and better in a different neighborhood.
We ordered a roti canai (because I love the stuff and it was a cheap app, $3.95) and a pho (large size was $6.99; they only have "small" "large" and "XL").
The roti canai was a disappointment. If you have ever had roti canai, you would know that it is supposed to rise several inches in the air and be a fluffy, flaky, chewy paradox. Thai & Pho's roti was four tiny pieces of fried flat bread that were obviously pre-frozen. The curry sauce had a nice mild spice to it, but was way too salty. Avoid this one.
And on to the important part - the pho! Noodles were soft, didn't clump, and were overall good. The broth was good as a broth, but didn't have much distinctive pho flavor. The beef we had ordered raw but the slices were not pink at all, but they were sliced extremely thin. I will say that a $7 bowl of noodle soup went a long way toward feeding two people. I am also a fan of the huge ladle provided to slurp up the goodness. The pho did not come with the usual raw bean sprout/lime/basil leaves... but there were Sriracha and Hoisin already on the table, so fine.
Our food came within 10 minutes of ordering. I had no problems with the waitstaff, either, who were prompt and generally young and spoke fluent, barely accented English. Another reviewer seems displeased that the waitstaff didn't speak English - as opposed to French, or an Asian language?
The interior is modern-looking but the restaurant itself doesn't necessarily give off a "new" vibe. They seemed to have a healthy crowd in the vast space for the awkward time of day (3pm) and it looks like they could handle large groups easily. They are connected to Tokyo Sushi next door, so you can order from Tokyo Sushi's menu and/or a la carte sushi as well.
As expected, the meal was reasonably priced. Nothing really stands out about this place, so I'm not sure how this review became so long. TL;DR? Avoid all the roti. The pho was definitely satisfying but reminds me of a Chinese pho place in Queens that I frequent when I am feeling too lazy to get to a real Vietnamese place.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)