ottawa foodies

Very awesome! These are the authentic bubbly-crispy rice paper chả giò, loaded with pork and chewy cellophane vermicelli. You get two massive rolls for $6, served on a small bed of lettuce and rice vermicelli. Top notch!

I have had spring rolls at various restaurant locations in Ottawa. In my opinion, Pho Bac make the best I've ever tasted. The rolls are also quite big. The fish sauce is so tasty that if there is a little bit left at the end of my meal..I drink it.

I found the prices very reasonable. To date, I would only have one complaint, but it is not about their food. They should spend a few dollars and renovate..not much ambiance.

Thank you.

felinefan, they're near the Tanger Outlet in Kanata.

I jut wrote to them to ask them if they will make cocktail size rolls. Can you tell me approximately where they are located? I love spring rolls.

When a friend gives me samples of her home-based food product to try, I have a choice: say nice things or say nothing at all. Thankfully the decision was easy in this case!

These meaty and delicious spring rolls are on par with the best I've had at Vietnamese restaurants in town. In fact, I'm not even sure where to go these days for rolls as good as these. Considering restaurants are charging $4-5 per pair, their price of $3 per pair (minimum order of a dozen rolls) is very reasonable.

The nước chấm dipping sauce is worth mentioning. Most Ottawa restaurants leave out the sliced chilis and save money and effort by using vinegar instead of lime juice. Not here! The fish sauce is absolutely brilliant. Highly recommended.

Shrimp, pork, carrots, cabbage and vermicelli filling. The pork and shrimp seemed marinated so it is a little better than most spring rolls. It's 2 rolls for $4.95 but they are huge.

I'm happy to report that monty's comment still stands. These are some of the best spring rolls I've had lately. Quite large ($5 per pair) and full of delicious pork and shrimp.

Excellent pork/shrimp spring rolls here

Best I've had in my life! You must try them with the lettuce and the mint!

The best I've had - I can eat a dozen of them!

Some of the nicest spring rolls ever. Not greasy at all (this is very rare) and with good flavour.

Verbatim from the menu "Soa Noy Horm Pha - 5 Shrimp Spring Rolls". I too thought I had ordered shrimp rolls by accident. They don't have shrimp rolls listed anywhere else on the menu, and right below the item I ordered was "Pak Horm Pha - Spring Rolls stuffed with vegetables". Bad assumption on my part.

Are you sure these were marketed as spring rolls? They are normally listed as "shrimp rolls" on Thai menus, and they're supposed to be like that (well, except they should be fully cooked).

Singha Thai's version are whole pieces of shrimp wrapped in spring roll paper and deep fried. To add insult to injury some them weren't fully cooked and the sauce was eerily similar to a President's Choice bottled product I've tried before.

Typical Viet style, very small and crispy with pork and shrimp filling. Good flavour...

Very good shrimp spring rolls! A tad on the small side but hey, quality over quantity. ;-)

They were pretty good but we found them to be a tad on the greasy side. Not a problem, since nobody's denying they are deep fried! The extra large length is very cool.

I didn't get a picture of these wonderful ditties but they were really yummy....not greasy and nicely deep fried. What I noticed was that they were signigicantly longer than other springrolls I've had elsewhere.

They serve Cambodian spring rolls here. These are the best fried spring rolls I've ever had. The rice paper seems extra crispy. I have no idea what's inside (which is the way it should be) but it's very tasty. Served with a sweet tangy fish sauce.

Extremely crispy rice wrap and pork spring rolls.

Big and crispy vegetable spring rolls. The flavour was ok. There are shrimp and chicken and vegetable options too. There were shrimp triangles too which I will try next time.

These were quite small, tasty, and satisfyingly oily in that great Vietnamese way!

Walking home at about 9 last night I passed by the “Springroll king” and I thought I would give their spring rolls a try. Unfortunately the namesake of the restaurant does not live up to the product. I picked up three spring rolls which took 15 minutes to make….

When I got them, they were completely greasy and had minimal ingredients. Definitely a frozen product, thus the fifteen minute wait time, kind of ridiculous. I must admit however that they were quite large and cheep at 1.20 a pop. But man, suuuper greasy on the way down, and I had a ring of oil around my mouth when I finished them. The plumb sauce was literally watered down. It was super runny, and it tasted like store bought sauce that was extremely diluted. LAME! I’m glad I didn’t order anything else. I can’t really comment on the other food here but, I’ll skip the so-called king of springrolls any day.

Bad spring rolls - too greasy, all cabbage and dipping sauce was nothing special.

Two Thai Spring rolls served with regular sweet sauce. Crispy and fresh - quite good and reasonably priced!

The spring rolls were very standard, but not in a bad way. Served very hot, nice and crispy, with the usual filling of pork, carrot, and cabbage (or transparent noodles? -- can't remember). Nice and long, but a touch pricey at $4 for the pair.

I'm told that this style of spring roll (yellow, kind of loose, and fairly greasy) is uniquely and authentically Vietnamese. I find the flavour just okay, but they are certainly appetizing.

One nice thing about Ox Head is that they offer a double portion (4 spring rolls) for somewhat less than double the price of a single portion (2 rolls).

They were a little on the greasy side but quite tasty. Not the best I've had but not the worst either.

I heartily disagree with you, Fresh Foodie. These egg-style rolls are how fried spring rolls are done in Vietnam.

To everyone else, these are delicious. The perfect ratio of crispy to soft, and the shrimp inside isn't broken or blended into an unidentifiable purée. Thủ Đô does one spring roll and they do it very well.

The spring rolls are awsome here.

I think they actually cut them an half once cooked and dunk them back into the deep frier to finnish them off letting the oil seep into them.

Heart attack waiting to happen but oh so yummy.

To eat them the propre way, you have to wrap the spring rolls in the lettuce and then dunk them in the fish sauce.

Bonne bouffe!

I heartily disagree with the guy on the restaurantthing site who said something like, "I've been to 50 pho houses and these are the best spring rolls in town." No way! These tasted okay, but we were disappointed. Spring rolls at Pho Bo Ga are much better than this!

I just wish they offered the whole-shrimp ones at lunch! I always love those.

I had the Shrimp Spring Rolls and they came with little tails sticking out one side. Cute! My friend was horrified (she's picky), but we both loved the taste.

I'm not a fan of them here because I find them to be bland and a little greasy.

Too greasy and not much flavour other than the oil.

These were decent. Light, crispy, not greasy, with a nice sweet chili sauce for dipping.

While I find that Royal Thai tends to lack the subtlety and authenticity of restaurants like Sweet Basil, I must say that their spring rolls are by far the very best that I've ever eaten. They're perfectly prepared and served with a sauce that's simply out of this world. If anyone knows the secret of their sauce, please let me know what it is!

As delivered.

Vegetarian.

Tasty. One had some substantial chunks of mushrooms. Rice vermicelli not overcooked. Less greasy than most delivery spring rolls.

I love Spring rolls.....very much so.
When I had their shrimp spring roll it was sooooo yummy. They had a whole shrimp thinly sliced throughout the whole roll. Big thumbs up for me:)

We had the #1 - Poa Pia Goong Tood, which was shrimp and served with a sweet dipping sauce. The rolls were a fair bit smaller than anything I'd ever had before, and extremely delicate. But not the slightest bit greasy. Absolutely delicious!

We also ordered their Spring Rolls. One order consists of 2 little rolls only (not 3). We asked the server to give us a pair of scissors to cut each tiny roll into 2 so that 4 of us can share. The taste was very good. But just too tiny!

One order consists of three little delicious rolls as opposed to only two. Best bang for your buck on Somerset.

Shrimp spring rolls were piping hot and very good!

I'm so disappointed you didn't like these FF! Judging by your reviews, it looks like you're quite the spring roll guru as well :)

True - they were very different than what you'd get at a Chinese or Vietnamese place, but I really liked the texture and flavor of the roll itself. Anyhow I've only tried them once, but they were memorable.

Beautifully presented, but not as gigantic as we expected for the price ($12 for the pair). I could forgive that if they tasted amazing but they didn't. To my taste, they were too sweet, too mild, and not "Asian" enough. Based on the description, I was expecting some flavour of Char Siu.

People seem to like them though, so please be warned that my opinion is not shared universally. :-)

They have spring rolls as both a dinner and lunch appetizer here. Two rolls stuffed BBQ pork, roasted sweet potato, wild mushrooms and Daikon slaw, Szechwan saté sauce, and a side ginger sesame dip. Nice and crispy and juicy on the inside without being too oily. If they had sriracha and hoisin on the side I'd be in heaven!

Went to Cafe Indochine for dinner tonight. My entree, Grilled Shrimp with Vermicelli came with a Spring Roll and it was delicious. Crispy, hot, non-greasy and satisfying. I'm wishing that I'd placed an order for several to take back to the hotel with me.

Nothing special. Not bad. Absolutely piping hot when they arrived!

We had the Shrimp Spring Rolls on our first visit... they were very yummy. And as Fresh Foodie has illustrated with his photo, the presentation in a martini glass is really neat. We noticed that this appetizer is very popular... there were a lot of them being distributed the night we were there.

Consequently, I got to thinking that because this restaurant also serves a variety of fancy cocktails, that they must go thru a lot of martini glasses in an evening.

As you can see, presentation is nifty -- using a martini glass for these guys. They weren't piping hot but they were delicious!

Pork spring rolls were delicious today

I tried the spring rolls once here but didn't like them much and never ordered them again. But... on my most recent visit I ordered the shrimp spring rolls and was pleased! Sure, they're greasy, but the flavour was nice (mildly shrimpy) and they did a wonderful job of appeasing my growling and ornery stomach as it impatiently awaited baptism by soup.

Spring rolls at Mee Xim leave something to be desired.

They're nice and crispy on the outside, but the inside is filled with nothing but blandness and perhaps a hint of something that might be cabbage. Most of the flavour, if any, comes from dipping it in the fish sauce.

I'm not going to order them again.