Dining Out - Pho Saigon

Pho Saigon

With the end of year coming, our household has had another member departing, and so we've headed out to a different local restaurant to have a farewell dinner. I've been meaning to get here for a while, and was happy when the other people agreed that it sounded good.

When you are seated at a table, you're given a couple of menus, one just being text, which has better descriptions of each dish, and one being effectively a photo album, with a picture of every dish. It'd be great if they were in the same order, and for the images to also have the dish number next to them as well as the name, but we managed to get by.

They have a lot of options in the menu, and it can be a bit overwhelming if you don't already have some idea of a type of food you want to at least narrow it down a bit. I knew that I was going to be ordering a pho, which meant that I only had to chose between 4 or 5 options, and our vegetarian member only had the 20 or so options from the vegetarian section. The other three however took a while to work out what they all wanted.

^{I started off with some Chicken Dumplings, which were nice enough, but not anything special and I wouldn't order them again}

Having the photo of dishes is always helpful in seeing what the serving size might be like, along with just if it looks like something you might like, and I think more places should do this, especially for foreign cuisines, but it would work for pretty much any cuisine to see what it looks like before you commit.

^{Pho Dac Biet - Rare Beef, Brisket, Beef Balls, Tendons and Tripe. Rice noodles in a beef broth}

^{As is often the case, Pho was served with this plate of additional things. Vietnamese Mint, Bean Shoots, Lemon, and Chilli}

As always, taste the broth first to see what their master broth is like. This places isn't that complex, and to be honest it's a little oily with a fairly subtle beef flavour and nothing else to it. I stripped all the mint leaves and dumped them in, about half the bean shoots, as I knew I'd be wanting them anyway. I then squeezed in the whole lemon wedge (carefully catching the seeds!) and from the bottles on the table added a bit of soy sauce and about a third of the chilli. Stir it all in and taste the broth again. I ended up adding about 3 times the soy I started with, and almost all the chilli that was provided, though there was also a thing of hot sauce (sriracha) on the table too.

These additions gave the broth a darker colour, and had a much nicer flavour and a bit of heat, though it would have been nice to have a bit more sour too it. I possibly could have asked for another lemon wedge, but didn't bother.

By the time I got to the Rare beef, it had cooked nicely in the broth and was very tender. The brisket was very fall apart and a bit difficult to get a decent purchase on with the chopsticks as it would fall apart with too much pressure, or slide through with not enough. The Beef Balls were very good, and the tendons provided a very interesting texture that I'd not come across before. I didn't actually notice any tripe in my serve.

As usual with pho, I struggled to finish the entire bowl and actually admitted defeat with about 3/4 an inch of soup left, but there were very few noodles and no meats left behind. I suspect that this was a combination of having the dumplings beforehand, and having just a normal spoon to drink it with, instead of the more traditional Asian soup spoon.

^{One of the other residents ordered the Charcoal Grilled Pork Chops}

^{Left is Beef Vermicelli and Right is the Vegetarian Pad Thai. Not pictured is the other order which was a Seafood Pad Thai}

It was a pretty cheap night out, with the 5 of us getting a main each, and I got an entree and a can as well, and the bill totalled just over $70. Everyone had a decent amount of food, with the Vegetarian taking leftovers home, and me failing to finish the pho. For it's price, it's certainly worthy of another visit. It's not super brilliant, but it is good, and it is cheap.

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