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Phở Quê Hương – Birmingham

Published by Astronomer on October 30, 2008 in Banh Mi, Banh Xeo, Birmingham, Bun Bo Hue, Bun Thit Nuong/Xao, Goi, Restaurant Review and Vietnamese. 5 Comments

The day after my first solo foray into home-cooked Vietnamese food (sorry, I was too busy concentrating on the task at hand to take pictures), my mom and I met my Dad for lunch at Birmingham’s original Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Que Huong. This place has been around since at least the mid-90s, but now that they finally have some competition, I wondered how they were measuring up.

The menu at Pho Que Huong is pretty diverse—the kind of all-over-the-place one-stop shop that you would expect at a location that has long had to satisfy an entire city’s Vietnamese food cravings. My mom and I spent some time exploring our options while we waited for my Dad to arrive. Strangely, our waiter looked Indian rather than Vietnamese, and when I settled on the bun bo Hue, he asked, “Sorry, what number is that? I don’t speak Vietnamese.” Hmmm… I had assumed he was the husband of one of the cooks or cashiers, but I would have thought he’d at least have learned the names of the foods by now.

I suggested that we start the meal with a plate of goi tom thit. The salad was perfect, with just the right amount of tartness and a nice collection of herbs mixed in. And of course, it featured a hefty American helping of juicy shrimp and pork.

My Dad went with the bun thit nuong cha gio. Just like at Pho Hoang, the cha gio were made with inferior Chinese egg roll wrappers, but the meaty innards tasted pretty darn good. Although the nuoc cham wasn’t the best I’ve had, the dish came together quite well.

I was disappointed with my bun bo at first—the flavors just weren’t quite what I was expecting—but it grew on me, and I ended up deciding it was a solid bowl of noodles. I was too full and sweaty to drink the broth at the end of the meal, but we took it home in a Tupperware to eat with some banh pho we had at the house.

After extensive deliberation, my Mom decided to order the banh xeo. Paired with our noodle bowls, it made for a bit of an unconventional meal, but I always like to encourage my parents to try new things. The banh xeo was an interesting hybrid of the southern and central Vietnamese styles: about eight inches in diameter, it was crispy, thick, and overflowing with shrimp and meat. Plenty of greens were provided for wrapping. The overall flavor couldn’t quite match the best of Da Nang-style banh xeo in Vietnam, but I think it actually surpassed the offerings at Saigon’s world-famous Banh Xeo 46A.

The next day I stopped by Pho Que Huong again to pick up a sandwich for lunch. Even at the outrageous price of $4.50, banh mi thit nuong was my obvious choice. I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed when I got home and opened it: there was no sauce to speak of, just strips of grilled pork with pickled vegetables and cilantro. It was actually an excellent sandwich, as far as sandwiches go, but sadly I was expecting more. The portion size was also rather small for the price—nothing like the sweet deals I’ve gotten on banh mi in California (to compare Birmingham with Vietnam wouldn’t even be fair, but for the record, in Saigon, $4.50 = 15 sandwiches).

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Pho Que Huong
430 Green Springs Hwy.
Homewood, Alabama
Phone: 205-942-5400

Phở Hoàng – Birmingham

Published by Astronomer on October 29, 2008 in Birmingham, Bun Rieu, Bun Thit Nuong/Xao, Cha Gio, Chicken, Mi Xao / Hu Tieu Xao, Pho, Restaurant Review and Vietnamese. 5 Comments

Unbeknownst to me, my family in Birmingham, Alabama has been eating bun bo and pho several times per month for much of 2008. They haven’t been making it at home—despite the presence of Andrea Nguyen‘s Into the Vietnamese Kitchen on my mom’s bookshelves. In fact, nuoc mam made it’s first appearance in our household only last week. Rather, it turns out that a new Vietnamese restaurant recently opened near our church in Hoover. No doubt, Vietnamese food in Alabama is a big deal—for many years Pho Que Huong on Green Springs was the only option in Birmingham—so I was plenty excited when I found out about Pho Hoang. On my first weekend back in town, I joined my mom, dad, and brother for a meal at their new favorite dinner spot.

In addition to my curiosity about what exactly Vietnamese food would look like in Birmingham, I was looking forward to the chance to impress the owners by speaking a bit of Vietnamese. I was unprepared for the possibility that there might be only teenagers manning the dining room.

One of them approached our table, and I asked him if he spoke Vietnamese. He nodded, and I said “toi song o Viet Nam mot nam roi.” Dammit, I already forgot the tense/words my teacher taught me that would clarify that I lived in Vietnam for a year but am no longer there! He looked at me blankly for a minute and then seemed to understand. He mumbled something that I couldn’t make out. “Em noi sao?” “Uong gi.” “Ah, uong gi. Nuoc lanh thoi.” The whole exchange was pretty awkward—not nearly as cool as I had imagined. He was an American kid, clearly more comfortable speaking English than Vietnamese (especially when conversing with someone whose Viet pronunciation is mediocre at best), and it just didn’t feel right. I resigned myself to speaking English for the rest of the meal. At least I could say the names of the dishes right. Maybe if I ever meet a member of the older generation at the restaurant I’ll try again.

We proceeded to place our orders. The menu was heavy on noodles, as one might expect in a “Noodle House.” There were a smattering of other choices, including rice plates and hot pots, but overall it was less of an all-inclusive hodgepodge than I’ve witnessed at other Vietnamese restaurants in America. Apparently my family always starts off with the chicken wings. Maybe they’re not the most uniquely Vietnamese offering, but they did turn out to be tasty, and my mom and brother are obsessed. My family also loves the goi cuon, and I convinced them to order a plate of cha gio as well. It was funny having a waiter take our “appetizer” and “main course” orders separately.

The goi cuon (not pictured) looked and tasted reasonably authentic, although they were served with a strange sauce that was only a distant relative of hoisin. They didn’t quite live up to my family’s enthusiastic praise, but then again, I’m spoiled. The cha gio, on the other hand, looked nothing like what I’ve come to expect. Maybe it’s impossible to get the right kind of wrappers in Birmingham—whatever the explanation, I would have identified these as spring rolls from some Asian country, but certainly not Vietnam. It would have been okay if they tasted awesome, but they didn’t. Biggest disappointment of the night.

We all ordered noodles for our next course. My brother Dan got his standby, pho dac biet. Dac Biet—that’s my boy! I was surprised he liked the tripe and other interesting meat shapes and textures included in this preparation, but he has decided that it’s his favorite dish on the menu. It was an absolutely enormous bowl of pho. So much meat, and as many noodles as a bowl at the Muslim noodle shack in Kunming. Oh, America. At the end of the day, everyone except me took home leftovers.

Someone recommended the bun rieu cua to my mom on her last visit, and she was not disappointed. The broth was truly delicious—light and yet flavorful. She later commented that she could eat a similar dish three meals a day and never grow tired of it. I’m inclined to agree. It was a little different than the bun rieu I’ve had in Vietnam, but I think I actually liked it better than the other versions I’ve tried, Thanh Hai excepted.

My Dad wanted to try something new and settled on the mi xao don. The noodles were thinner than I’m used to, more like Chinese pan-fried noodles, and the ratio of seafood/meat to greens was quite skewed compared to what you’d find in Vietnam. It seems to be an ongoing theme that certain ingredients remain unobtainable in our great state of Alabama. They also threw in some baby corn—what is this, Chinese food? Authenticity aside, the dish was really quite tasty.

I didn’t feel like eating a hot soup, so I decided to try the bun thit xao. It was pretty solid, although I was disappointed that the dominant flavor turned out to be peanut rather than lemongrass. As with the other dishes, the portion size was large, as was the price ($6.99). But don’t get me wrong—by American standards, Pho Hoang is certainly a great deal for lunch or dinner. I’ve never been so stuffed after a single bowl of bun.

Overall, I was quite pleased with the meal. It wasn’t perfectly authentic or perfectly delicious, and the cha gio were sad, but for Birmingham, it was pretty damn good. The ambience was similar to what I’ve seen in California: strip mall location, sparsely decorated but clean interior, etc., but unfortunately there were a lot of empty tables when we visited. I sure hope they make it.

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Pho Hoang Noodle House
2539 John Hawkins Parkway
Hoover, AL 35244
Phone: 205-560-0709

Al Fresco's – Ho Chi Minh City

Published by Astronomer on September 17, 2008 in BBQ, Chain / Multiple Locations, Restaurant Review and Saigon. 6 Comments

Al Fresco’s Café & Grill is a Saigon institution, at least among the expat crowd. I know this because my colleague Mimi, the quintessential expat, orders their barbeque spare ribs for lunch two or three times per week. Unbelievably, The Gastronomer and I made it through an entire year in Saigon without trying those puppies for ourselves. However, on our 368th day in town, and my last day at the East Meets West Foundation, my co-workers offered to take me out for a farewell lunch. They kindly let me choose the location, but at the last minute plans were changed (something about a meeting near the Sheraton) and we ended up eating at Al Fresco’s. I decided to go with the flow; after all, I like meat, and it seemed only right after eating at Pepperonis that I sample the cuisine at its slightly more upscale cousin.

The Aussie-owned Al Fresco’s offers a mix of American, Italian, and Australian food, with a few wild cards thrown in. On this day, two of my co-workers ordered Mexican taco salads. They didn’t look very appetizing. I went for the ribs, of course. There were four portion sizes to choose from—Pygmy, Junior, Mini, and a fourth slightly less puny-sounding term that I can’t remember. I wasn’t feeling up to eating a whole slab of ribs, so I swallowed my pride and ordered the Mini (180,000 VND).

It turned out to be pretty damned large. I figured finishing off a half rack would be no problem; after all, as a gangly high schooler in Alabama I polished off full racks in one sitting on several occasions. However, these ribs were longer than the ones I’m used to (the meat’s imported—they certainly don’t have pigs like this here), and after living in Vietnam for some time, I’m not used to consuming large quantities of meat straight up. By the end of the meal I was feeling a little queasy.

I wasn’t really expecting much from these ribs. However, I found myself pleasantly surprised. The meat was awesome—really freaking fall-off-the-bone tender. The sauce certainly wasn’t classic vinegar-based Alabama style BBQ sauce, or Texas style or North Carolina style or any other recipe from the southern United States for that matter. More than anything, it tasted like pure ketchup. That may sound like a bad thing, but it wasn’t really. Meat and ketchup is good. I haven’t had decent ribs for well over a year, so I’m sure my standards have been lowered considerably, but I must admit that I really enjoyed the meal.

The ribs were served with a side of decent steak fries and a half-hearted attempt at a salad that I didn’t touch. I was too full for dessert, but I sampled a few bites of a solid chocolate fudge cake with ice cream. Although I shied away from eating at Al Fresco’s for a long time, I came away impressed. It seemed from my colleagues’ comments that the menu is hit or miss once you veer from the ribs, but the star attraction is well executed. They seriously use some pretty high-quality meat. The sauce has no tanginess to speak of, but it does the job. I certainly wouldn’t recommend coming here on a short visit to Vietnam, but for the long-term resident with the occasional BBQ rib craving, it serves its purpose well.

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Alfresco’s
27 Dong Du Street
District 1, Ho Chi Minh City
Tel: 08 822 7318

Phở Bò

Published by Astronomer on September 4, 2008 in Pho, Saigon, Street Food and Vietnamese. 6 Comments

Frequent readers of the blog will have no doubt noticed that The Gastronomer and I don’t eat pho very often. It’s not that we dislike it, but it just doesn’t excite us the way a good bowl of bun bo or bo kho does. In the Saigon heat, a noodle soup had better be damn good to make the requisite sweat bath seem worthwhile. The environment in Hanoi is more conducive to eating pho (from October to March that is…), but I actually like the sweeter, more flavorful southern version better, so for a long time it seemed that I was just out of luck.

However, a few months ago we were driving home and noticed an amazing fragrance drifting across Nguyen Khoai Street in District 4. It was coming from a roadside pho stand that we had never noticed before. Driving around on a motorbike in Saigon, you breathe in a lot of dust and come across a wide variety of aromas, some of them terrifying. However, the opportunity to discover hidden culinary gems purely by smell is one of the coolest things ever. The scent of this pho cart was one of the most alluring we’d ever encountered. We resolved to return for a meal as soon as possible.

I was quick to follow through on this promise. After my first bite, I knew that we had indeed found the best pho bo in town. The flavor was magnificent—no need to squirt in large quantities of hoisin and hot sauce to make the broth interesting. It was substantial enough to make me want to dip banh mi in it and soak up the leftovers, an honor previously reserved for bo kho. The dominant scent and flavor was star anise, subtly accompanied by a number of other spices. Everyone puts star anise in their pho, but the taste of this place’s broth is unmatched. I think their secret may be as simple as just adding more of it.

My enjoyment was heightened by the addition of beef brisket (nam) to the bowl. Previously I had only tried pho tai (small pieces of rare beef), but nam definitely adds to the experience. On The Gastronomer’s first visit to the stall, they had run out of her personal favorite cow part, the stomach lining (sach). Nevertheless, she agreed that the broth was delicious. The smell is key—it permeates the senses as you eat, allowing you to spend the entire meal in a state of relaxed bliss. There used to be another pho restaurant on Nguyen Khoai, but they recently switched to selling com ga xoi mo and mi xao. I’m pretty sure they were run out of business.

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Directions: Head down Ben Van Dong Street in District 4 and make a left onto Nguyen Khoai Street. The stall is located 300 meters down the road on the left hand side and is open from 5 to 10 PM.

Noodlepie's Sarnie

Published by Astronomer on August 31, 2008 in Banh Mi, Saigon, Street Food and Vietnamese. 7 Comments

There was an era a few months back when I would read Noodlepie almost nightly for dinner ideas. The Gastronomer was working late, so I was on my own to scour the streets of districts 1 and 3 in search of new dishes, and I found a lot of winners. Once, I stumbled upon a post entitled “Is this the best sandwich in Saigon?” It was about a lady selling banh mi thit nuong in the evenings at 37 Nguyen Trai Street. He writes:

I’ve tried many a sarnie in this mad megalopolis, but this particular specimen is undeniably the bread’s bollocks. Enjoy. I did. Burp.

Of course I had to try it. There are two primary styles of banh mi thit nuong in Saigon—one is nuoc mam-based, while the other is dressed with some version of barbeque sauce. This lady’s sandwich was my first taste of the latter style. The sandwich is simple, just meat, do chua (pickled daikon and carrots), cucumber slices, and barbeque and chili sauce. Being a weakling, I typically decline the chili sauce, but I’ve tried the sandwich spicy a few times and it’s still pretty damn good. The pork pieces are circular—closer in shape and texture to bun cha patties than the meat typically featured in banh mi thit nuong.

On my first visit to the stand, I had to wait 10 to 15 minutes behind a line of motorists and workers from nearby shops to receive my sandwich. This has become a routine—there’s no doubt this lady is popular! She starts selling banh mi and bun thit nuong in the late afternoon and typically runs out of meat by 7:30. It’s no wonder—the sandwiches are awesome. I can’t quite go so far as to proclaim them the best in town (my favorite sandwich vendor in District 4 still has a special place in my heart), but they’re definitely a must try, and two for 14,000 VND is one of the best dinner deals out there.

There are few things I’ll miss more upon leaving Saigon than banh mi thit nuong. This is the dish that almost singlehandedly convinced me that it’s okay to eat meat for breakfast every morning, and on more than one occasion, I’ve eaten three sandwiches in one day. The nuoc mam-flavored variety seems more traditionally Vietnamese to me, while the version with barbeque sauce brings back memories of Alabama. Either way, nothing brings joy to my heart like spotting a miniature grill on a street cart. It’s a sure-fire sign of good times to come.