Ottawa Foodies

Here is the fabled "Special A" (large). Satay style soup with beef, shrimp, and BBQ pork. Lightly spicy, and graced with slices of tomato and shredded Nappa-style cabbage.

I forget which one this was (could it be the same as the previous one I had?) but it was great! Again, with a shrimp cracker.

The only pho restaurant I've seen that offers a shrimp cracker in a satay-style soup! This is the Special 3 (S3), Large.

Very tasty overall, although the MSG levels are more noticeable here than in other places.

The inside of this restaurant is clean and neat and is not like those in Chinatown. Every one ordered Phở Tai (we had the one with beef and meat balls, #262 on the menu, see photo). The taste was not bad. But my friend told me their Phở is still next to New Mee Fung. Anyway, it is good to have a good quality Vietnamese restaurant in Barrhaven. Hurrah! Cheap dinner tonight, around $14 per person. Better than pizza or McDonald.

Here's a medium H09 chicken broth soup (BBQ Pork with Rice Noodle and Egg Noodle). Most yummy!

This is my favourite place to get Pho. The broth is flavourful and their sate specials are even better! Cheap, friendly and portion sizes are large!

4 x 650ml containers for just under 10 bucks for takeout is pretty hard to argue with. That makes 2 extremely generous meals for an adult. Not sure how they manage to make it so cheap but keep up the good work!

The the broth is somewhat lackluster compared to pho houses in Chinatown, and the price is a little steeper. Still - overall a good soup (I usually stick with beef ball)

The seafood pho didn't have a very tasty broth and had proportionally too much noodle. Stick with the spicy ones!

The satay soups are marked "spicy" and, unlike most pho places, they actually are. Tiny fragments of dried chili peppers float in your bowl. Most yummy.

I concur with Fresh Foodie.. the broth, and the Pho are top notch here, if the selection is a little limited. I don't mind the 'spring rolls', but that is not saying they are good, but rather just part of the experience that I have fond memories for at this place. I used to go here once a week... hmm.. wait a minute.. it's been a while since I've been... I think I'll have to start going again. Anyone up for lunchtime, Chinatown Pho?

We tried this place after reading rave reviews on the restaurantthing site. I have to mention that they have just one kind of broth -- the standard "Pho Bo" beef one. (At other restaurants, we normally prefer the pork and chicken broth with seafood or bbq pork.) They offer just one broth but they do that broth very well! The rice noodles are nice and narrow. Small is pretty small. The one in the photo is a large.

Best Pho soup stock in town....

I had this "Chicken Noodle Soup." It's the first time I've seen chicken in the beef (Pho Bo) type of broth, and it worked quite well. Not quite the depth of flavour you find on Somerset, but not bad.

My complaint is that the ratio of noodles to soup was too high. They offer one size of soup and then have a note saying you can upgrade to a Large for a buck. I opted for this Large version but now wonder if this meant they use the same bowl size and just increase the noodles!?

If I were staggering around drunk on Elgin craving some pho, I'd happily come here again. I won't drive across town for it though.

As you can see, this spicy seafood soup is chock full of seafood! The shrimp were some of the nicest and freshest I've encountered in a Vietnamese soup. On the other hand, the broth was just okay, lacking the depth of flavour found at the really good places.

The pho was very similar to the one I've had at Pho Thi on Merivale (good!), with maybe a little more depth to the broth. I had the chicken broth soup with chicken and shrimp. Accompaniments were as usual.

They only have two sizes here -- small and medium. Sucks for me because I like to have a large.

Phnom Penh offers four noodle soups that are similar to pho. I tried the S11 Spicy Rice Noodle (Chicken, Meat Balls, Ground Pork, and Shrimps). Very nice indeed! Fairly tasty broth, good spice level, with a generous proportion of hearty noodles. Two shrimp, two or three slices of chicken, and a pile of meatballs kept things interesting.

I had the Pho (one size fits all), P7 Special Combo: Beef Rare, Well Done and Beef Balls.

Broth was good but very mild. Meat was fine. Noodles slightly overdone. It was a decent bowl of soup and I'd have it again, especially because this place is pretty close to my work.

Whoa baby! My medium 37. Chicken Sate Rice Noodle soup earned its chili pepper icon with flying colours. You can see the thin but angry-looking layer of chili oil floating in the bowl...

I can safely say that this is the spiciest Sate pho I've encountered, even slightly more spicy than the ones I've had at Pho Maxim. I couldn't really taste the broth as a result but enjoyed it very much all the same. The chicken was plentiful, tender, and in nice small pieces.

Wifey ordered a medium 35. Seafood Rice Noodle soup. It came with shrimp, fish balls, and fried fish slices. Her only complaint was that the noodle ratio was a bit high (some people prefer that though).

I tasted her broth and it was actually quite incredible. Not strong-flavoured at all but incredibly delicious in a very subtle way. We agreed that this was possibly the broth we'd had that was least likely to contain MSG. I'm eager to go back and try a bowl of this myself!

karey, the narrow green leaf is a type of coriander: en.wikipedia.org
The flavour is like coriander, only milder.

Thanks for mentioning the delivery option -- I'll add the tag!

Very nice pho, fabulous beef and broth, very fresh side garnishes...small is $5.50, medium is $6.50. large is $7.50 no matter which type you order. Medium is enough for two; I'd love to see how big the large is, but I haven't had the guts to order it. Medium is almost 2 litres of soup. I love the rare beef (101 on the menu, I believe). Bun is also very good at this place, especially anything with BBQ beef (well balanced yummy fish sauce mix served on the side). Salad rolls are definitely not the best I've had...quite bland, too much mint, seemed like the rice paper was very tough and hard to chew...maybe they had been refrigerated? But a very nice peanut sauce.

Service is very good even when it's packed at lunch with office workers from nearby Tunney's. Slight language barrier, but they had no problem understanding that my BF has a shrimp allergy and were quite ready to make any necessary subs..

Apparently they do delivery, I will be trying it on the next ridiculously cold, snowy night.

A question for those with more Pho experience than I; the garnish plate that accompanies the soup has Thai basil, mung bean sprouts, a lime wedge, and one unidentifiable narrow, pointed green leaf. What is this green leaf, what does it taste like, and what do I do with it (seems too tough to throw into the soup and eat like the basil)?

Had the seafood noodle soup for lunch today. It was pretty good, TONS of veggies which I like. Shrimp, a shrimp ball???(not too sure what it was, but it was good) and fake crab meat. Broth was okay but I liked it.

I ate a plate of Bratwurst and Rösti at Richtree, then in a sudden wave of virtuosity tried the vegetarian Vietnamese soup. It was pretty good, and full of the veggies I was craving. The meat ones are probably a little more tasty though.

Excellent broth and spicy soup options here. My coworkers and I drive in from Kanata all the way to Bells Corners for the food.

Just ate lunch here. This place is great! Lots of menu items including soups with beef or chicken broth. This is the Chicken and Shrimp Sate Rice Noodle which I recommend. I am coming back here!

I had the H01 - Chicken broth rice noodle with beef and shrimp satay. It was definitely tasty, with more fried onions and sesame flavour than other places. Spice level was low-moderate, just pleasant.

The Pho Bo (beef) comes in 3 sizes, but the others (including mine) have just one size. I would be happier if I had a choice of sizes (the single-size bowl looks like a medium).

First time visit, very disappointed.

We went on a Saturday evening for take out. There were only about 5 tables of customers. All of which were eating, finished eating with their dishes left on their tables, or paying their bills. It took over 25 minutes for the order to be prepared, and during that time, they informed us that there wasn't any chicken left and so we had to change our order.

When we brought the food home less than 5 minutes later, I opened my package and was sadly disappointed at the tiny portion of food offered. I ordered the rice paper roll ups, which usually at other Pho places come with several rice wraps for rolling, I was given ONE small ripped piece that was laying at the bottom of the sparse noodles and dry meat that I unable to distinguish between pork or beef.

That and the noodle soup were extremely bland. I constantly added more Hoisin sauce and hot sauce in hopes that I would be able to taste anything, still in disbelief that I was only provided the one rice paper roll. The spring rolls were the only redeeming factor.

I'm very surprised in this booming Pho market one place could possibly expect to provide such poor turn around and bland food and expect to survive amongst the competition. I will never go there again.

My recommendation is take the extra few minutes and find another place for some Vietnamese cuisine.

I haven't been here in years, but it's the very first Pho place I ever heard of. It might have been the first one in Ottawa -- or at least one of the pioneers.

I've now tried both kinds of broth here and am of the view that the beef one tastes superior to the chicken/pork. I normally choose the chicken/pork based soups at pho restaurants but I will make an exception for Pho Moonlight.

We received our soups about 3 minutes after ordering them. The Large here is a little smaller than you'd find on Somerset and there is no Extra Large. Still, it's a nice big bowl of soup and they will see more of me since it isn't too far from work.

That's a great idea, Ashley! Since I know bean sprouts are especially prone to carrying foodborne illness I usually just ignore them and don't use them in my pho. Asking for them cooked is a good plan -- I'll be sure to do that when restaurants don't seem too busy!

This is the bean sprout for the Phở. I asked the server to "blanch" the bean sprout for us. (You know, with E. coli found in spinach, I am more careful for uncooked vegetable and I don't know if restaurants wash the vegetable thoroughly.) The server didn't understand the word "blanch". So, he asked the kitchen to "steam" the bean sprouts. That works for me.

After my son's piano recital (grade 9 piano now), I asked my son where he wanted to go for dinner (anywhere except MacDonald and Pizza). He told me that he didn't want to take too much time to eat since he needed to go home to play his computer game. Well. I don't want to drive to downtown either. So, I decided to try "Pho Moonlight" for Phở.

This is our first time here. The place is clean (not like downtown's Phở places). Only 6 customers (including 2 of us) there on Saturday night.

My son ordered large size Phở Gà (#111 of the menu) which is rice noodle soup with chicken ($7.95). I ordered medium size Phở Nạm (#108) which is rice noodle soup with beef flank ($6.95). Within 15 minutes, we got the Phở (see photo). They arrived steaming hot and we put the bean sprouts to the bowl. It is good to have hot noodles to soothe the stomach in the winter time.

I don't see too much difference between the Medium bowl and Large bowl. Besides, I don't see too much meat inside the bowl either.

The taste of the Phở is okay. But compared to the Phở places in downtown, this place is still missing something. I don't know what it is. But if I don't need to drive and the weather permits, I would prefer to go to downtown to eat Phở. Anyway, it is a convenient place in the winter for Kanata residents.

Service was friendly.

P.S. When we left, my son told me in the car that Chinese food tastes better.

The photo is of my XL "Special B" -- satay chicken, BBQ pork, and tofu in chicken based broth. It was heavier (greasier? saltier?) than usual and no discernible spice level. The latter observation is strange for something promoted as "satay." No fear, I was able to squirt some sriracha in and make it okay. Quite a passable broth but I've had better at the other Pho Bo Ga places. Generous amount of meat and noodles in the XL.