All Entries in the "Vietnamese" Category

Pho Queen Restaurant in Richmond

It had been abnormally cold the past week or so here in Vancouver.  It’s kind of unbelievable that we have temperatures below the freezing point even in high afternoon.  The sun was shining ever so brightly but as soon as you step out doors, you just feel the chill right down into the bones.

The boys were away at their friends which leaves Suanne and I alone again.  It’s a blessing that we have more time to our own but then again, we know that as the boys gets older, they will spend lesser and lesser time with us.  Eating out together is what I had always enjoyed.

Suanne and I had nothing much in mind.  Weekend after weekend, we normally do not know what we wanted to eat.  When it is time to eat, we just jump into the car and drive.  We decided to drive to the Union Square, a strip mall with lots of Chinese restaurants along Capstan Way.  Since it was so cold, we actually were thinking of either pho or hot pot.  We decided to check  out the Pho Queen.

Pho Queen had just opened because I recall this place used to be a Chinese restaurant.  Pho Queen is perhaps the classiest Vietnamese restaurant around because they have a chandelier in the middle of the dining room.  The restaurant is roomy and spacious because obviously this used to be a large Chinese restaurant.  Even the tables are the expensive marble ones.

Their menu had a lot more varieties than the usual pho places.  Despite the name Pho Queen, their menu is dominated by the non-pho stuff.  The pricing is very reasonable with a large bowl of pho at $6.50 to $7.00.  They even have Cambodian dishes.

I had scanned their take-out menu into PDF here if you want to check out it out.

I had the Egg Yolk Condensed Milk with Soda on Ice.  How does that sound to you?  What a weird combination right?  This one is $3.00.  It does seem to me it is blended although I am not sure exactly how this is prepared.  It just tastes like a very rich but fizzy milk to me. Read More

Au Petit on Main Street and 33rd, Vancouver

I had always heard so much about Au Petit … about how popular it is but we had never been there nor did we know where it was.  All we know was that Au Petit is a Vietnamese restaurant.  We met up with Angie’s family again for a weekend lunch.

As many of you already know, Angie is the person behind Sea Salt With Food.  Sea Salt With Food specializes in home cooking recipes.  What is amazing with her site is that all the recipes were her own cooking … and she blogs everyday.  Moreover, she told us that she tries to make her home cooked food better than what she comes across outside.  I was just thinking how lucky her family is having such variety of home cooked food everyday.

The Au Petit cafe is located on Main Street and 33rd St in Vancouver.  From the outside, it does not really look like what I had imagined it to be.  It was somewhat more old and rundown than I had expected.

The place is really small, befitting its name.  Despite its looks, it is undoubtedly a very popular restaurant with a lot of customers, many of them taking out.  There was once I heard the owner saying at the top his voice that he needed people to order one at a time when there were a few customers milling around the counter trying to place their take out order all at once!  BTW, FYI, the owners are Cantonese speakers.

As much as we wanted to spend a lot of time enjoying the meal, we realize that this is not a place where you hang out after a meal.  We do feel rushed, not because the owners rushed us but the sheer turn around of the tables and the many take out customers.

We soon realize why this place is so popular.  There are nothing on the menu that costs more than $7.50.

I had the Dark French Iced Coffee With Condensed Milk.  It was a much smaller cup that I am used to in other Vietnamese joint — much smaller but much better.  They made it very thick and what I like best is it is rather bitter’ish too.  $3.15.

The other drinks we ordered was the Ice Soda with Lime.  $2.50.

And the Iced Tea was $2.

Their Vietnamese Shredded Pork Salad Rolls is highly recommended.  It has a very fresh crunchy vegetables and particularly great dipped in the fish sauce.  What we like most was the strong basil flavour.  It was $6.25 and came in two rolls.

I believe their specialty is not the Pho but their fresh French Bread.  They had it mentioned on their signboard and most tables had them too.  It was indeed the best such bread we had ever tasted.  It is very light but the amazing part is the crust which is thin and crumbly.  It does make a mess breaking the bread.  You gotta try their French Bread.

The bread actually came together with the Curry Beef Stew ($7.50).    This dish quite OK (not great) with lots of firm beef cubes and tendon with carrots which is the saving grace.  We wished that the beef stew is made hot and a bit more thicker.

The above is excellent.  It’s called the French Bread Sub with Home Made Ham, House Meat Ball, Vegetable and Hot Pepper … and it is only $4.50.  Be warned that the hot peppers are deceptively hot.  If you like hot stuff, you will like this.  It’s messy eating this because I ended up with lots of crumbs all over the table and my lap.  If you want to order just one thing in Au Petit, you should try this.

Angie had the BBQ Lemongrass Boneless Chicken with Vegetables.  This is served on rice noodles and fish sauce.  The BBQ Chicken looked really good and they are quite generous with the amount of chicken meat on this dish.  $7.50.

Nanzaro had the Assorted Seafood Rice Noodle in Soup ($7.50).  I find this a pretty respectable seafood noodle soup because of the number of seafood items in there.

Arkensen and Justin had Pho.  A large one costs $6.75.  Arkensen gave a thumbs up for this.  I find that it has quite a bit of MSG.  Also, they did not serve pho with fresh basil and chili.  Maybe they forgot about it.  It does look pretty unexciting to me.

The bill came up to about $70 including tax and tips.  They accept only cash, BTW.  We wished we had a lot more time here but overall the meal was good.  I think they have one of the best Vietnamese subs around … all thanks to their bread which made the world of difference.  And don’t forget their awesome pork salad roll too.

An Nam Restaurant in Richmond

We just came across a new kid in the block, so to speak.  There is a new Vietnamese Pho place located on Granville Ave between No 3 Rd and Garden City.  It is actually just next to Value Village.  I had always thought that there is a dearth of Pho places in Richmond but speaking to Suanne now apparently, there are lots of them.  See if I can name all of them:

Thai Son • Pho Viet • Pho Lan • Pho 99 • Westlake • Green Lemongrass • Pho Hoa

We recall that this place used to be a Chinese Restaurant and we distinctly remembered that we did not go to that Chinese restaurant because it was once closed by the Health authorities for pest infestation.  But from the outside now, this place had a new fresh cleaner look.  This certainly looked like a Pho place unlike all others.

Walking in we went wow … this place is perhaps the cleanest Pho restaurant we had ever been to.  Everything is spanking new and very well organized.  It is also the brightest pho restaurant we had ever been to.  They even have several wide screen TVs placed all over the place.  We liked it immediately.

Arkensen ordered the Mix Beef Pho.  He had the large order.  Their menu had this as $7 for the large and $6 for the smaller serving.  I took a sip of the broth … it was good and flavourful.  It does look quite clear but it tastes good.  Arkensen liked this a lot.

The bean sprouts that came with the Pho was very fresh.  How can I tell?  Firstly by the color as it has to be perfectly white, especially the roots ends.  They serve the bean sprout cold.  Does anyone know why some places serve them cold while other serve them blanched?

For me, I had the Grill Pork and Spring Roll with Vermicelli.  I find that this is a bit too bland to my liking.  The fish sauce in particular did not impart much of a taste to it.  But what I really liked is the spring roll which had the rougher skin … you know … sort of dimpled type … you know what I mean?  What is the word for it? *shrugs*

The Grill Pork was awesome especially as it was served with with some crushed peanuts.  I really liked this and I think you would too.  Again, the vermicelli is kind of bland … to bad or else this would have been perfect!  This one is $7.50.

Suanne was a little bit more adventurous this time and ordered the Vietnamese Pan Cake.  It was like crepes and was filled with pork, prawn, and bean sprouts.  On the side there were the assortment of greens.  We could not figure how to eat this.  It was huge.  Do we stuff the greens into the pan cake?  Put the greens on top of the crepe or what?

Suanne ended up making a mess of this but still it was good.  The soft warm and meaty crepe went well with the cold crunch of the greens.  This one costs $8.50.

An Nam takes only cash and does not accept credit cards yet.  We like this place and will certainly come back again next time.  You should check this place out and I think you will appreciate how clean this place is.

May Vietnamese Cuisine in Richmond

There’s a new Pho restaurant in town and it has an “unvietnamese” name — May Vietnamese Cuisine.  The reason I said that is because it’s not called Pho-something or Pho-some-number.  It does conjure an image of an upscale Vietnamese eatery because of the word Cuisine they tag on to the name.

May Vietnamese Cuisine is located on the wrong side of No 3 Road.  Most of the food actions along No 3 is located on the eastern side of the road.  The western side is pretty dead as far as food is concerned and is dominated (or rather used to be dominated) by car showrooms.  I can only name Sea Harbour, Tim Hortons and Golden Szechuan on this side of the road but can name three dozen other eateries just across the street.

It is located on 3451 No 3 Road.

We would not have noticed it if not for the specials that they advertised on the local city papers.

Dinner for Four for $55 (limited period special price for $39.95) seems to be expensive for Vietnamese food, the word “cuisine” notwithstanding.  On paper, there seems to be a lot of varieties for sure but we had never quite spent $55 for Vietnamese food as long as I can remember.  Now … for $39.95, it sure was worth trying.

What really drew our attention was the “No MSG” claim which I thought was quite bold for Pho.  Maybe there are no MSG added but I swear I felt kind of thirsty after the meal there.  I checked with Suanne too and she felt like there are MSG.  I could be wrong.

Decor was bright … and “unvietnamese”.  It’s too modern.  Not sure why but am just comparing with the Pho places we normally go to.  When we were there, the air conditioning broke down.  They apologize for it but we chose a hot day to eat there.

If it matters, the folks here speaks Cantonese.  Maybe they are Chinese-Vietnamese.  ** shrugs **

Almost every customer that day came with the newspaper clipping for the Dinner-for-4 $39.95 special.  Oh … there are rules … quite a number of it.  On seeing that we have the newspaper clipping in our hands, we were promptly told that we cannot order the $19.95 Dinner-For-Two special … not even if we order that with additional other dishes.  Weird.  I thought that it will not do them any favour by imposing this rule at all.  ** shrugs**

I must say they have fancy plates, cups and cutleries.  The tea cup is one of a kind … cute but only for the right handers.  Because of the shape of the cups, I get kind of a vertigo using them (just kidding).  We get a choice of tea and opted for Jasmine.  Someday, I will learn the differences between all the types of tea.  For now, I can’t tell one tea from another … Suanne can but not me.

I told you there are rules … and here is another one.  We can choose either the Salad Roll or the spring roll.  Oh, we can’t have two spring rolls and two Salad Rolls … we can have either have four salad rolls or four spring rolls.  Weird.  ** shrugs **.

Anyway, we opted for the Salad Roll.  The big, fat, prawn laden salad roll came with some peanut sauce for dipping.  It was awesome, superb, great.  The peanut sauce made a huge difference to the plain tasting salad roll.

Course two was the pho.  They gave us two large bowls to share between the four of us.  It was kinda disappointing.  Firstly, there are only beef flank … sans my favourite tendon.  The soup tasted plain, almost tasteless and the rice noodle hard and uncooked.  It was not too great — we had better ones before.

Course three.  The Seafood Crepe smell so nice when it was brought to our table.  It’s egg crepe with beansprout, imitation crab meat, prawns, scallop and squid.  Nice and moist … and very, very, very good.  Love it!

There are more!  Course four was the Pork Chop Rice.  We can have the option between Pork or Chicken with either Broken Rice or Vermicelli.  Oh, we cannot mix and match … I repeat … we must choose either Pork/Chicken with Rice/Vermicelli.  We can’t have one Pork with Rice and another Chicken with Vermicelli.  There are rules you see.  ** shrugs **

Despite the rules and our grudging acceptance of it, we should just be honest and give them a double thumbs up for this.  We love this but by then we were so full already.  We took a few bites for taste and then took the rest home.

Hey, you guys tell me … what is the big deal with BROKEN rice?  They were actually good.  If I did not know any better, I would have thought that broken rice is cheap, discarded rice … i.e. rice that is not perfect and discarded during processing.  If long grain rice is expensive, then surely broken rice is cheap.  Educate me now … tell me everything you know about broken rice.

What do you call the above?  Brochette?  Nicely done, nicely presented .., and very delicious.  That above makes course number five.

Not in the correct order and if you count the beansprout as a course, that makes it course number six.

And finally … the perfect number seventh course … dessert which is sago banana sweet soup.  Kind of unique but I can’t get my head around having soup with banana.  At least the spoon is cute.

There you have it … our $39.95 special meal.  That’s $55 bucks for you guys now if you go there now as the specials is only for July.  Overall, the rules sucks, the pho was disappointing, the air cond need to be fixed … otherwise, their other food are winners.  I recommend the crepe.

BTW, they only accept cash.

Pho 99 Restaurant in Richmond

There is a new Pho in town.  It’s called Pho 99. We saw it on the adverts they placed on the local papers.

Every now and then, when Nanzaro had one of his Pho cravings, he’ll demand that the entire family go with him.  He always wanted to go back to the same old places and eat the same old things but I got a job to do.  My job is to blog about new places and we cannot always go back to the same places can we?  I mean, how many times would you all enjoy us writing about Kam Do!

It’s always a test of will with Nanzaro but I win most of the time because I pay the tab.  This time I let him win because Pho 99 is a new place.

What surprised us was that Pho 99 is located in the same spot as one of our favourite eateries, Coco Chilli.  We blogged about Coco Chilli here before.

So, Pho 99 is located along the far eastern end of Alexandra in Richmond.  They apparently have 6 outlets in all and surprisingly, two of which are in Bellingham and Seattle in the US.  Wow … an international Pho chain, so to speak.

Inside, it looks virtually the same as when it was Coco Chilli … the same fake coconut trees were still there.  The operations were new and I could see that the waitresses were quite uncertain of their own menu.  But they were very eager to please though and that is good.

The above is called the Hot Spice Rice Noodle, Beef Shank, Beef Flanks and Pork Ham.  It costs quite cheap, $6.75 — not a lot cheap but certainly cheaper than most other Pho places.  It is a lot more spicier which is great.

Their Pho is pretty good.  We had the Noodle Soup with Eye Round Steak and Fatty Brisket.  This Pho is listed under their “Adventurer’s Choice” section.  I like this one better than the normal dry tough briskets that other places normally put into their pho.

I am not sure about you all but to me Pho must always be served in a huge bowl.  Here they do that.  All large bowl of phos are $6.65.

The free bean sprout is really small.  We never touch the basil leaves but we do see many people plucking the leaves off the stems and threw it into the soup.  Must try it someday.

Next was the Marinated Grilled Lemon Grass Pork Chops.  The pork chops were quite big and most importantly they are very moist and juicy.  It was perfect and I am sure a lot of you would like this as much as I did.  This one costs $7.90 — not bad, huh?

The above is the Vermicelli Bowl with Veggie Marinated Prawns and Grilled Pork Slices.  The vermicelli is hidden below the heap you see.

I am not sure if this is the right way but we always pour the entire bowl of the fish sauce into the the vermicelli bowl.  Hmmm … thinking about it, Suanne does not make fish sauce at home but am thinking this stuff could be great with many other dishes.  Can you think of what this would also be great with?  Also, please educate me … is fish sauce only common to Vietnamese cuisine?  Or do other cultures use this too in their cooking or food.

Anyway, the bill came up to $25.70.  Not bad, I must say.

Thai Son Reopened in Richmond

Thai Son was one of the first restaurant reviews we made when we started blogging two years ago. We used to go there very often until one day the entire strip mall along the No 3 Road in Richmond was torn down. In place of that strip mall is the still under construction final stop of the new Skytrain Canada Line.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that they had reopened on Garden City and Leslie Road. It’s just across the road from Fabricana. Thai Son is now also opened in three other locations. They are also at:

• 373 East Broadway, Vancouver
• #230-2800 East 1st. Avenue, Vancouver
• #201 4501 North Road, Burnaby

They had labeled themselves as “The Best Vietnamese Food in Town”. For us, they are really one of the best Vietnamese places we had been to.

The place is much larger than the old Thai Son but just as packed as it was then. I am pretty sure many of the patrons are return customers because there is no way a new restaurant in this location could draw that many people. This new location is quite out of the way for many.

Their menu is still the same ones we were so accustomed to from the old Thai Son restaurant on No 3 Road. It’s exactly the same except that they are newly printed. Oh, I remember their #30 … always had that. I remembered going to Thai Son and just ordered #30 without even looking at the menu.

The bean sprouts were blanched. It would have been nicer if it was blanched a bit longer. Great with a little sprinkle of salt and pepper.

Nanzaro ordered the large Seafood & Rice Noodles in Soup for $6.75. Nice hot broth and richly adorned with artificial crab, fish balls, squid and shrimp. Their portions are above average which is what we like.

This above is their #30. If you like spicy soupy noodles, then this is what you MUST order. #30 is known as the Thai Son Special Spicy Beef and Vermicelli in Soup. A large bowl costs $6.50. Put in dollops of oily chili flakes for that extra kick, if you like. What I like best is that meanest looking piece of pork hock … always enjoyed it and always regretting enjoying it too … it is nothing but just bones, skins and FAT. Oh yummy!

Arkensen had the ho-hum Beef Balls and Rice Noodles in Soup, $5.95 for large. We love the aromatic stock. The smell really sticks to our cloths, no kidding. If you eat here, take a moment to take a sniff of your shirt … the smell will stay for hours. Nice.

Their servings are huge and so Suanne decided to arm herself with an empty bowl and taxed each one of us. The total bill came to $20 including tax and tips after a 10% grand opening discount. Highly recommended … you must go.

Lan’s Restaurant on West Broadway

Here is one more really, really old post.  We were here for dinner on one of the Vancouver fireworks night.  Oh … that must have been late August or was it July.  Anyway, it was really old.

We have a fixed ritual every year.  We love to go to the fireworks, not so much for the fireworks but we simply love to set ourselves down next to the waters and just wait hours for the firework to start.  This one time, we decided to check out places in and around Broadway and Granville.  One does not need to go far as there are lots of great eateries that caters to all kinds of tastes and budget.

I did not feel like spending much for food those days because we had just gotten back from a long (and expensive) vacation.  :-)  From the outside, we know this place serves pretty affordable meals.  If I recall correctly, this is a Vietnamese restaurant (not pho … but Vietnamese).

Since there were only three of us (Arkensen was away camping), we ordered a Dinner Combo for 2.  It costs only $26.80.

The combo comes with a Soup of the day which is a Hot and Sour Tofu Mushroom soup, the thick version.

The appetizer is a Crispy Shrimp Dumpling serves with vermicelli on the side.  The Shrimp Dumpling skin is made of yam where the outside is fried to crispy and the inside is creamy and soft with shrimp filling.

The appetizer also included Garlic Bread with herbs, very nice and refreshing.

The main dishes include Beef Brisket with Tomato Sauce.  Nice big chunky beef.

Our favourite is the Curry Jumbo Prawn where the creamy sauce is great with both the steam rice AND the garlic bread.

Bet you think that a Combo for Two had just two main dish but no … we also the Chicken Steak and Pork Chop.  It’s so sweet and juicy and what we liked most of that it was grilled with some charred edges.  It was, like the Cantonese says, very heong!

The dessert was just a scoop of vanilla ice-cream — no big deal since we had such a good meal already.

So … what do you think?  For less than 30 bucks, it’s good eh?  Here is roughly where the restaurant is:

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