ottawa foodies

Been a few times.

Liked the food and they were the first Pho Shop in town with brown wooden chopsticks (and not the plastic cream colored ones).

BUT... the last few late lunch time visits kinda turned me off. It was the strong smell of cooking oil in the air. And I mean STRONG. Any stronger it would have been a mist.

I guess running the ventilation (on high) during the winter months, may cost a lot.

Oh well... I'll try again when it's late spring.

We visit Pho Thang Long about once a month... sometimes with the stepkids and sometimes without. We like to start off with pork & shrimp rolls. I always get the rare beef noodle soup & my partner usually gets a rice dish. For the kids, it's hard to go wrong with slurpy noodle soup!
The reason we keep coming back to this place is because we enjoy the owner who makes us feel like close friends. One time as we were taking our seats, he came out and presented my stepson with his hat that he had left behind about a month earlier! We were very impressed... especially considering we didn't even know that he had "lost" the hat in the first place!

I get my weekly pho fix from this place (I live a brief walk from it, so it's very conveniently located). It's very affordable, the broth is more flavorful than others I've had in the city. The chicken wing appetizer is one of my favourites, they taste like nothing I've ever had before. My SO swears by the chicken vermicelli dish.

Bun bo hue from here is very spicy, there's a layer of chili oil in it, and the owner won't let you do a takeout order since it basically melts the styrofoam packaging they use. I wised up and brought a tupperware container and he let me do it then! This version is missing the sometimes present chunk of coagulated pork blood. Still tasty, nonetheless!