ottawa foodies

I just came back from having dinner there tonight with my family. I haven't been there in such a long time so I thought it'd be nice to go back. The place was completely empty which is very sketchy seeing as it was dinner time!

Their menu has a long list of different pho but I wouldn't recommend buying it because there's more onions than noodles&meat. The broth was a little bland and their sizes are a little misleading. They offer S, L, XL; L was more like a medium though at the price of $7.

What I do recommend however, is their rice dishes. I ordered "Com 3 Mau" which literally translates into '3 coloured rice'. Its a rice dish with 1) pork chops 2) quiche (they called it egg) 3)shredded pork. The portions were amazingly HUGE!! Biggest serving in all of Chinatown, I promise. My sister & I could've shared one order for $8.50. But we didn't know how big it was going to be so we each ordered a serving for ourselves... And literally sat there for 40mins trying to finish it all. This place is the BEST place if you're craving vietnamese rice. And for only $8.50 its definitely worth a try :)

The sort of remote location of this place on LeBreton has somewhat intrigued me. I finally popped in for some lunch to see if it was worth the hype.

I am not a huge Pho lover so I perhaps missed what this place is known for. I ordered some spring rolls and a daily special which was described as stir fried rice noodles with shrimp and bean sprouts.

I found it interesting to note that this place opens at 10am.

The decor of this place is pretty non descript. Everything looks a little bit weathered.

I was a bit turned off that this place takes no plastic but has an instant teller that will ding you a fee to take out money in addition to whatever fee your bank dings you. I refuse to use these machines so I only ordered what I could afford. I would have ordered more items had I been able to use an alternate form of payment.

Instead of receiving hot fried spring rolls, which is what I ordered and specified by menu number, I got cold summer rolls. I like these too but this version was only average. The peanut sauce served with them was quite nice.

My noodle dish turned out to be some sort of off shoot from Pad thai.It had a spicy peanut type sauce but no cilantro/lime like pad thai. The dish had quite a number of large shrimp, which made it a good value at 9.95. I was a little suprised that they didn't mention peanuts or spice in their menu description.

In general, the food was OK but didn't WOW me. I probably wouldn't bother going back because I have other Vietnamese favorites.

My son enjoyed his beef ball phở, but my wife wasn't really thrilled with her seafood rice noodle soup (pictured). I tried a bit of each, and also my daughter's huan thanh (won ton) soup, and I reached the conclusion that the soups aren't the strong point of the menu. They're okay (and certainly much better than I've had recently in the ByWard Market) but they're nowhere near the richly flavoured stocks I've enjoyed in Nepean and Kanata. Temper your expectations and you might be pleased anyway!

I ate here with a few colleagues after work today. Ordered a large beef ball - I liked the broth although it tasted a tad heavy on MSG/salt. Chock full of green onion and beef ball though. Also looks like they do asian karaoke if you're into that sort of thing.

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!

The grilled meat and rice dishes here are indeed very good! My Shrimp, Beef, and Chicken on Rice ($12.50) was generous and satisfying with nicely marinated meats, lots of fluffy rice, and nice crisp veggies.

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