My wife and I hit this place before catching a bus back from Philly. Generic name aside, this place was pretty good at satisfying our cravings for Viet food.
We started with an order of banh cuon; rice noodle crepes rolled with ground chicken, mushrooms and herbs, served with a tangy, sweet and savory fish sauce and bean sprouts.
This is one of my wife’s favorite Vietnamese dishes, so we pretty much always try to order it if we see it on a menu. This one was pretty good, but I think it’s safe to say we’ve both had better.
Next were a pair of soups.
First, the classic beef pho noodle soup, with thinly sliced eye round beef (my go-to Viet soup of choice).
This packed a good amount of flavor, but, again, we have had better. Nonetheless, this bowl was still better than good portion of NYC Viet joints, which are known to suck on the whole.
Second soup: My wife had bun bo hue, which is typically a spicy lemongrass pork- and variety meat- based soup that contains everything from tripe to congealed pork blood.
This version had brisket as opposed to all that offal. It was still super spicy and had a great lemongrass kick to it. Also, the noodles were good. Lots of times the noodles used in this style of soup get too soggy and overcooked. These held up nice to strict scrutiny.
I still liked the pho better, but that’s a subjective thing for me. I think, objectively speaking, the bun bo hue was the better bowl here, even though it was dumbed down and “Americanized” a bit to avoid the use of offal meat.
VIETNAM RESTAURANT
221 N 11th St
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Vietnamese food is a tough nut to crack in NYC. Most of it sucks here, and the few places that people rave about just don’t really do it for me. I’ve been to places where they get one dish right, but fail on others. They have a great sandwich, but the soup in bland. You can literally go to almost any other city in America and find better Vietnamese food than you can in NYC, which baffles the living shit out of me. New York is the best at everything, so why not Vietnamese food? Who knows. The answer eludes me. Maybe the Vietnamese community just isn’t big enough here, or there aren’t enough courageous Vietnamese chefs that are willing to stretch their neck out and take a financial risk in the highly competitive and quick-to-closure NYC restaurant scene.
Goddess Kali: house sake, sparkling wine, chia seeds, hibiscus, lemon and pineapple.
In any case, Bo Caphe isn’t like those lame joints that attempt to offer traditional Vietnamese food and then fail to deliver because there is not one single Vietnamese person on staff who would know how to make the dishes. Bo Caphe is embracing the non-traditional by proudly offering fusion dishes that you can get excited about, like the Bao Burger with taro chips.
The burger had a nice char on the outside, with what seemed like diced onions mixed into the grind. It was juicy, and the steamed bun was the perfect Asian version of a soft and pliable yet strong potato bun. The addition of cilantro and green pepper sauce made it pop. The taro chips were a nice touch as well. They were thin, crisp, well seasoned and only occasionally greasy.
Being a French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant is nothing too outside the box, since binding the two cultures makes sense from a historical/colonial perspective. But Bo Caphe dives a bit further into French territory by offering a few selections that feature cheese, something largely not featured in Vietnamese cuisine, let alone Asian cuisine generally. Both the spring roll menu and bun menu featured cheese. The spring roll item, Vach Kiri, which literally translates to “laughing cow,” is a fried rice paper wrapper that’s filled with cheese and quinoa.
The fried chicken bun had some goat cheese. I enjoyed it, as it added a different texture and flavor combination to compliment the pickled carrots and daikon on top, but I can see how this might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
The braised beef bun, on the other hand, was pretty straight forward and delicious. No cheese that I could taste. And while I was eating this one I remarked that I was surprised the Bao Burger didn’t feature any cheese. Of all places to have it, that seems like the most proper fit for cheese in Asian cuisine.
The noodles here were fantastic. We tried two styles: one was cooked lemongrass beef, and the other was raw diced salmon. The salmon dish was reminiscent of a poke bowl but with noodles and fish sauce for dressing rather than soy-based sauces. It was refreshing and tasty.
The lemongrass beef was my favorite of the two. The beef was really tender and packed with great lemongrass flavor and aromas.
Both noodle dishes were topped with peanuts, shredded carrot and cucumber, fresh mint and a veggie spring roll.
The next two dishes we tried run the gamut from traditional Vietnamese to traditional French. No real fusion here; two dishes in the style of two different countries. The first, of course, is pho.
This aromatic, comforting soup is not bad for NYC pho, but my wife and I are just spoiled by the soups we had up in the mountains of SaPa in Vietnam. Nothing can compare. In any case, if you need a fix, this is not a bad bowl. The noodles are slightly different than the usual flat style (these are square spaghetti shaped, like “alla chitarra”), but the aromas are great and they use cilantro, which is what we saw in Vietnam fairly often. If you dress this bowl up with some hoisin and sriracha, you should be good.
The second dish is a marinated skirt steak with salad.
The steak was largely French-inspired, even down to the mustard seed sauce (which I liked very much). The steak was a bit over-cooked for my liking, but it packed a lot of flavor and was charred nicely on the outside. I’d order it again, for sure. 7/10.
The watercress salad featured some nice ripe avocados, tomatoes and red onions.
The dessert menu has some interesting selections. First was a molten chocolate lava cake with coconut. The lava wasn’t very melty, but the sauce that came with it was delicious. The coconut here was similar to the inside of a mounds chocolate candy bar.
This black sesame ice cream was more like a cream ice of shave ice texture and flavor; light, refreshing, icy rather than creamy. It was delicious, especially with the toasted sesame seeds on top.
This next dessert was an interesting take on the avocado shakes that I love to get from Vietnamese restaurants. This was a chocolate avocado mousse. You could taste equally the avocado and the chocolate, which was a flavor combination that I never thought or expected to like. It was great!
The only down side was that they didn’t have the spicy pineapple, sumac and mint salad dessert item. I was really looking forward to trying that out. Also just FYI: I was invited to this joint as an “influencer” – basically free food in exchange for pics and an honest review. So there it is.
My wife and I hit this joint when we were in Boston for the weekend attending a wedding. My wife did some poking around to find this joint, which was highly rated and with good reason. It is better than anything we have for Vietnamese food here in NYC. NYC is known for having piss-poor Vietnamese food. Shameful.
So we ordered up a bunch of our regular favorites. First were the summer rolls and spring rolls. The summer rolls (goi cuon) were great. The ingredients were all nice and fresh, with good shrimp and pork inside.
The spring rolls (cha gio) were not as good, unfortunately. They had a different wrapper than we are used to having (I’m not sure which is correct or more “authentic”), but the filling tasted more Thai or Chinese than Vietnamese.
We also ordered banh cuon; broad noodles rolled with pork meat and mushroom inside, and topped with herbs, bean sprouts, crispy onions and thick-sliced Vietnamese bologne. It was excellent!
For the soups, we tried pho with sliced eye round beef (pho tai), and bun bo hue (beef and pork noodle soup with thick spaghetti style rice noodles).
Here’s a look at the pho, which had a nice strong flavor in the broth, high quality eye round and yet a light and fresh feel to it.
The bun bo hue had a great robust flavor, but I preferred the pho. The meat was all good quality and braised nice and soft, unlike many NYC places.
We even had some avocado shakes, which are becoming increasingly rare by us in NYC, and when they do it, it is almost always bland. This one was perfect! Just the right amount of sweetness from the sweetened condensed milk.
Other flavors available:
This place is right near the south bus station, so when we are back in town again, I’m sure we will revisit.
NEW DONG KHANH RESTAURANT
81 Harrison Ave
Boston, MA 02111
I am stuck waiting to see whether I have to serve on a jury down here, but the plus side is that there are some decent cheap eats joints nearby in Chinatown.
This is my second or third time eating here. My wife and I used to live around the block from about 2006-2009, and during that time was probably the last time we went.
I grabbed two of my four standard favorite Vietnamese items for lunch: pho and banh cuon. The other two are summer rolls (goi cuon) and spring rolls (cha gio).
The pho was a bit lacking in flavor. I missed the robust punch that should be associated with the broth. The noodles and beef were both of good quality though, and both the basil and the bean sprouts were nice and fresh. I generally order the Pho Tai, which contains just slides eye round meat, not the beef balls, tendon, tripe or brisket. So that could be why the broth was less flavorful. However I doubt they use different cooking vessels to create the base pho stock/broth, so diner beware.
The banh cuon, on the other hand, was pretty good. For those who don’t know what this is, the menu calls it “Vietnamese ravioli.” It’s wide, flat rice noodles that are rolled or filled with seasoned chopped meat inside – typically pork – and then topped with fish sauce, crispy fried onion, scallions, and thick slices of a processed kind of pork roll that’s similar to a bologna style lunch or deli meat. That description may sound weird to your western eyes/ears, but I assure you it’s good. Here, it was served on top of bean sprouts and some chopped lettuce.
Those two items, plus a beer, came to $21 with tax and tip included. Pretty great.
I was so pumped on the fact that I was back down in our old neighborhood with easy access to cheap Vietnamese food that I went back for dinner. There was this pork rice dish that caught my eye while I was there: Com Suon Bi Cha.
This is barbecued pork chop, shredded pork and steamed egg cake with white rice. The shredded pork was a mixture of gelatinous bits and roast pork, which go nicely with the rice for texture. The thin-sliced BBQ pork was delicious and exactly what I expected. It was tasty and had no gristled fat, with an awesome lemongrass and charred grill flavor. The rice was a tiny grain that absorbed the fish sauce nicely, and the egg cake contained a mash of what I assume was fish sauce and more ground pork meat. It came with carrots, bean sprouts, cucumber and tomato.
I also grabbed an order each of Cha Gio.
The spring rolls were crispy. I think they had more mushroom and veggies than pork inside, but I didn’t mind because all the fixings were nice and fresh. You wrap these fuckers in lettuce and then fill with cucumber, pickled daikon, carrot and mint leaves. Then you dip that shit in fish sauce and hot sauce. Delicious.
And that’s it. Tomorrow I’ll be hitting either another Vietnamese joint or a dumpling place. Nha Trang Centre is definitely good for a Vietnamese food fix. I’d skip the pho, but the other stuff is good.
BONMi is a Vietnamese-ish soup, sandwich and breakfast joint that opened about nine months ago on 62nd between Columbus and Amsterdam.
The menu is simple, fresh and straight-forward:
Unlike traditional pho, the soup here has very thin, rounded noodles, as opposed to wider, flat noodles. The broth is beef or veggie stock, and you can add a variety of meats as toppings. We went with 18-hour beef in beef stock, with a lemongrass sauce and everything but carrots on top. It was pretty good! Just don’t expect that robust pho flavor. This is more like a standard noodle soup than pho.
The sandwich, however, keeps it pretty real to banh mi. The flavor profile is similar, though not with exactitude, and the bread is good quality, crunchy, fresh French baguette style:
It is a bit short on length for the price point, but it is packed to the gills with meat and toppings. This is the pork belly filling:
The joint also serves pre-made salads, summer rolls and other Vietnamese items, like this fresh brewed coffee:
For all three items it was just over $22. Not bad, considering the quality was acceptable to me, and even passed muster with my wife (her heritage is Vietnamese, so she is naturally picky when it comes to anything claiming to be remotely Vietnamese). Give it a shot!
My wife and I dropped into this joint on our way to Philly, so this isn’t a NYC joint. We were shocked to see an Asian market and two Vietnamese restaurants right in the same strip mall. We had to try the basics.
The soup was great, better than most NYC places for damn sure. Its unfortunate how bad NYC is with Viet food.
The sandwich was kickass too. The bread was correct, and they used a good ratio of the various meats inside.
And my favorite dessert of all time: the avocado shake. Delicious.
This little place is on 47th Street just east of 9th Avenue, and is almost never open, despite two signs saying that they are open from 9-9 or 10-10. The people who run the joint also run the dry cleaners next door, which is a very busy place. So, as you may guess, the folks over there don’t always get to open up the food shop. They’re sweet as hell – I just wish their storefront was reliably open.
They have a big menu, and a little space.
The food is pretty decent, although not ideal, yet all I have managed to try so far is the traditional banh mi sandwich.
Good for a needed fix, but the ‘hood is lacking in Viet food to begin with, so take this joint with a grain of salt (if it is open when you go).
Last year my wife and I went on the trip of a lifetime: Vietnam. We started in Hanoi, then took excursions to the mountains of Sapa and the caves of Halong Bay. After that we relaxed in Hoi An for a few days before heading down to Saigon. Below are some of the foods we encountered along the way.
This is what I woke up to, looking out the window of our hotel room in Hanoi:
The restaurant workers are cleaning and gutting the chickens right on the sidewalk! I was fascinated. I must have shot 50 photos of this.
The hotel had some pretty amazing food. There was a complimentary breakfast buffet which consisted of both American and Vietnamese food, complete with a made-to-order pho station (beef or chicken). Heaven. Below are some images of the dinner selections.
By far my favorite part of the trip was the time we spent in Sapa. The mountains were beautiful, the small towns were rustic and quaint, and the food was both stunning and delicious.
I guess pho for breakfast is a pretty normal thing in Vietnam, because this is what we had at our hotel in Sapa – best bowl I’ve ever had!
Also a buffet breakfast, I followed that up with some veggie noodles, sausage, and sun bread:
Oh yeah – and some amazing banh cuon (usually beef or pork meat and mushrooms folded into a rice noodle wrap and topped with fish sauce and fried shallots) – also made to order right on the spot, like the pho:
Charged up from a great breakfast, we wandered around the town:
Snake WhiskeyStreetside Pig Roast
Then we took a little private tour of some of the mountain villages, and a nearby food market:
Stewing Horse Meat at the Food MarketLunch Meat!Chili PeppersFried Sweet Potatoes
The highlight of this excursion was the tour of the farming village. We went into an actual village home and hung out with the residents:
roasting corn, and smoking meatsacks of meat, smoking and curingpig feed
We stopped off at a local restaurant for lunch:
carrots and cabbagebeef & pepperscrispy pork belly with shredded gingernem, or cha gio (crispy spring rolls)water spinachboiled chickenfried veggiesand a refreshing beer
On the way back we saw a local giving new meaning to the phrase “bringing home the bacon.”
And a sign for dog & cat meat for human consumption – don’t tell PETA:
After a long day, it was nice to relax back at the hotel with some fruit, and another beer.
The next day we went to Halong Bay to explore the beautiful caves there. On the ferry over, we had some homemade snacks and drinks that my wife’s relatives brought along with them:
a ghetto banh mi sandwich – just bread and mystery bolognadry, crispy-fried squidlingshead cheesesome local beerand a salty lime drink, which would be perfect for margaritas
After a day in the caves, we needed some time in the sun. Hoi An was the perfect way to relax after doing lots of touristy stuff. We had some fresh seafood on the beach:
whole grouper with chili and fish sauce
And of course, a few cold refreshing beers by the water:
Hoi An had an amazing food scene. Check out some of the tasty shit:
“bun” – noodles with porkshrimp noodlescrispy beef saladcrispy scallops
Here was an interesting food cart that had some fresh breads along with fried blue claw crabs:
After our down-time in Hoi An, we flew down to Saigon to finish off our amazing trip. This first grouping of pics are street vendors and food market shots:
interesting warescakes and suchmacaronsdessert!prawnsgreensfishcrazy colorful drinksnight time street food!!!more greenslarvae, used for food prepdried itemsshellfish & snails
Then we did a huge sampling of local, exotic fruits. Below you’ll see sour sop, longan, rambutan, durian fruit, dragon fruit, passion fruit, and others:
On our boat ride to the Cu Chi tunnels, we were served some clay pot pork, summer rolls, veggies and rice:
And for dinner we had a home cooked meal at a relative’s house:
egg and meat crepescrispy spring rollssoup with blood puddingdurian fruit
I tried to limit all of this to just the food, but if you’re interested to see more of my vacation pics (the mountains, the people, the street scenes, the farms, the riverside towns, etc.), then go to MY PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE.
