ottawa foodies

These were some of the freshest gỏi cuốn tôm I've encountered... still warm when they arrived at my table!
$4.95 for two, very nicely presented. Stuffed with shrimp, quite a lot of vermicelli, and some lettuce. The peanut sauce (nước lèo) was the hoisin-centric style, with crushed peanuts on top. Very nice!

The fresh spring rolls were very tasty, as was the accompanying peanut garlic dipping sauce (not shown). Our only complaint was that the rice paper had the very slight toughness that indicates they were probably made ahead of time. We've had tougher ones at other places though, so we're just trying to be picky here. They certainly ranked up with those found on Somerset.

The sweet pickled red onion garnish was good too!

Fresh and tasty, the way it should be!

The Shrimp Rice Paper Wraps (aka Goi Cuon / Summer Rolls / Salad Rolls) were of very good quality, freshly prepared and containing a good ratio of vermicelli, lettuce, mint, and meat. The 4 separate bowls of peanut dipping sauce were a nice touch (most places give you one per order).

PejDaddy - is the sauce pictured there nước mắm? Some people call it fish sauce (it is not just the sauce from the bottle, but a mixture of that sauce and other ingredients).

They look pretty good, think I will go there tomorrow!

bbq beef and bbq pork rice paper wraps @ pho kam long. house-made fresh to order!!! these were quite generous in size and uber healthy you will love yourself fit and naked. the seasoned and bbq beef and pork were nicely warm on the inside with cooler vermicelli and veg fillings. the vinegar dipping sauce was TOO mild though -- something that i've found with common with vietnamese cuisine. these are so good, you can have them anytime of the day including your daydreams, nightdreams and smiling all the way.

These were freshly made, but lacked some of the herbal interest found in other restaurants. Also, they were thick and loosely rolled, which made them relatively difficult to eat. Not bad though!

If you order the "normal" wraps with pork and shrimp, you get the peanut-hoisin sauce as a condiment. With the grilled meat rice wraps, you get the fish sauce instead (as indicated by FEEL MY SERPENTINE).

beef rice wraps @ ox head. light apps like any vietnamese joint out there. here it comes with the fish/rice vinegar + carrot dipping sauce as opposed to the peanut soy sauce found in others.

Very fresh (made to order) and containing a generous amount of shrimp. The peanut sauce is more peanutty and less hoisin-y than usual -- not a bad thing!

Pros:
* Freshly made!
* Plenty of lettuce
* No bean sprouts
* Tasty shrimp

Cons:
* Too much noodle
* Sauce was more hoisin-y and less peanutty (still better than pure hoisin though)

Made to order, these were top notch! The dipping sauce was less peanutty than some but it wasn't the straight hoisin style.

The Goi Cuon was pretty good quality, and the shrimp was exceptionally plump. What floored us is that we only received *one* for the $5 we paid. Normally, one pays ~$4 for two of these.

Is it recommended? Yes, but only if you're feeling wealthy.

We went over to IKEA for dessert after, and paid $1.99 for a slice of chocolate almond caramel tart to even out our financial Karma. ;-)

They call them spring rolls but I know them as "summer rolls" and the ones I got there were the best I've ever had in Ottawa. They may take a few minutes to make but they are worth the wait.

cost: around $4 for two healthy summer rolls.

pork summer roll

I tried these on a previous visit a few years ago and can't remember much other than that they were unusual. The menu mentions apple and pineapple as ingredients, so if you order them expect to try something new!

I had the vegetarian version of these. They were okay, but not amazing. The vermicelli was well cooked, but the masses of iceberg lettuce made the roll a bit bland. I was a bit disturbed to find part of a sticker on the tomato slice in my *second* roll. I pointed it out to the server and suggested that they check for stickers next time.

These were very bad, but only because of the vermicelli. For one thing, they were stuffed with too much vermicelli but that would have been fine if it had been the usual moist noodles. What really got to us was the fact that these vermicelli were quite dry -- almost chewy. It was as though they'd been soaked a long time ago and then put aside until they dried out.

I saw someone else had ordered one of their vermicelli bowls and it seemed to contain the same kind of dried out vermicelli! Man, you'd need a whole cup of nuoc cham to get that down your throat...

These fresh spring rolls were actually made fresh (the rice paper wrapper was of a perfect moist texture) and contained a decent quantity of shrimp. Too bad about the vermicelli!

Has the size and appearance of a cabbage roll, filled with rice and other yumminess. The rice-paper wrap is fairly translucent so you can see the stuff inside. Comes with dipping sauce - very yummy. 2 for 3 bucks as of this writing.

Had Fresh garden rolls with Shrimp (Summer rolls) at Cafe Indochine. They were 2 for $4.95 and they were large rolls, stuffed with mint, vermicelli and three slices of halved shrimp each. They tasted fresh and were well paired with the bean sauce that came with them.

I'd have preferred a bit less vermicelli and some basil in addition to the mint as well as some carrot, but all in all, it was very good.

The fresh spring rolls (shrimp) were certainly freshly made (which isn't the case at many other restaurants) but they had more bean sprouts than I like -- half bean sprouts and half vermicelli.

Unfortunately, the menu says they come with peanut sauce or fish sauce but we didn't notice and the server didn't ask so we ended up with fish sauce. Didn't notice the peanut sauce option until reading the take-out menu just now. Too bad, because they would have been much better with peanut sauce!

The summer rolls here were extremely fresh - some places wrap them up in advance and it shows.

I think FF's comment of 'not full of flavour' can be attributed to the noticeably absent mint and/or cilantro (which some people may like)

Note my peanut sauce was much higher on the peanut:hoisin ratio as well

Extremely fresh (made to order for sure), a good amount of shrimp, but somehow not full of flavour. The sauce was heavy on hoisin and low on peanut. Recommended? Sure, but I'm not raving about them. :)

These are very good! Fresh and chewy-tender. The peanut sauce had good flavour but we found it to be quite runny, an observation that I mentioned when paying the bill. They said it shouldn't be as runny as we described and they'd check on it. Will report back next time!

FF, we got lots of mint!

Very fresh, good shrimp, but low on mint and the sauce was more like hoisin with peanuts floating in it rather than the really great peanut sauce you sometimes get in other places. Still, not bad at all.