Foods from Red Pepper Thai-Viet
Comments
2011 Sep 15
This place is super convenient for me, being right on the way home, so a pal and I stopped in for take-out. It's located where Don Alfonso used to be, on Bank at Gladstone.
We started with the shrimp salad rolls. Very average, in both size and taste. Not bad at all, but nothing to scream about, and the peanut sauce was watery. They did have a good amount of fresh mint in them though, which is more than can be said of some places that use little to no fresh herbs at all (in something that is supposed to defined by its fresh herbs!!--but I digress...)
Next was the Pad Thai with tofu. When I first opened the container, I was impressed with the amount. It was a generous amount of the noodles; however, when I dug in, I discovered they made for an extremely bland bunch of noodles. The texture was right, and you could definitely tell the egg was present AND well cooked, which means they've got the cooking times right, but there was just no oomph, no pop to this dish. There was no good "Thai food buzz" from it that you get from those really good pad thais. Oh well.
We tried both the beef broth pho with tripe and the pho with seafood. I was surprised to find that the broth for the seafood pho was the same (beef broth) as for the beefy pho (usually the seafood comes with chicken broth) but this is not a deal breaker, especially if your beef broth is solid. This was not the case however. It tasted the most like a run-of-the-mill chicken broth of all the pho I’ve had in Ottawa.
The prices are about what you’d expect to pay for Viet food on Bank St., which is to say higher than in Chinatown. That said, since Pho Bo Ga Truc is just down the street (as well as Saigon Pho, but I haven't tried that place yet), I won’t be returning here.
We started with the shrimp salad rolls. Very average, in both size and taste. Not bad at all, but nothing to scream about, and the peanut sauce was watery. They did have a good amount of fresh mint in them though, which is more than can be said of some places that use little to no fresh herbs at all (in something that is supposed to defined by its fresh herbs!!--but I digress...)
Next was the Pad Thai with tofu. When I first opened the container, I was impressed with the amount. It was a generous amount of the noodles; however, when I dug in, I discovered they made for an extremely bland bunch of noodles. The texture was right, and you could definitely tell the egg was present AND well cooked, which means they've got the cooking times right, but there was just no oomph, no pop to this dish. There was no good "Thai food buzz" from it that you get from those really good pad thais. Oh well.
We tried both the beef broth pho with tripe and the pho with seafood. I was surprised to find that the broth for the seafood pho was the same (beef broth) as for the beefy pho (usually the seafood comes with chicken broth) but this is not a deal breaker, especially if your beef broth is solid. This was not the case however. It tasted the most like a run-of-the-mill chicken broth of all the pho I’ve had in Ottawa.
The prices are about what you’d expect to pay for Viet food on Bank St., which is to say higher than in Chinatown. That said, since Pho Bo Ga Truc is just down the street (as well as Saigon Pho, but I haven't tried that place yet), I won’t be returning here.
d00n
Here's a picture of the BBQ pork (not xa xiu/char siu) with egg on rice for $9.99. Wasn't a sunny-side up egg and no bowl of beef/pho broth but still a pretty yummy meal for the price. I was actually expecting a whole chop but it already being bite-sized pieces made for a quicker lunch.
I think this special rotates between chicken and pork frequently.