vietnamese Archives - Curiously Carmen

House Special Modern Vietnamese

July 23, 2019 Leave a Comment

House Special is a restaurant whose name I have seen tossed around on other food blogs. While looking for a place to have dinner with Latte, I suggested we try this place. It had good reviews but I left feeling disappointed unfortunately.

House Special is among one of the recent surges of modern Vietnamese dining in the past few years, a concept that isn’t really that popular in Vancouver. Most Vietnamese restaurants are small, hole in the wall, family run places.

But I’ve seen House Special, CoM Vietnamese, Anh and Chi, Do Chay, DD Mau, just to name a few, open up which are different than what we are used to!

Anyways, House Special is located in Yaletown. I was quite surprised walking in because I have been in this space before! House Special replaced Malt and Marrow, where the boyfriend and I stopped for a drink after biking 4 years ago. I never wrote a review since we just had a beer.

They have a patio with communal tables but Latte and I sat inside. It was still pretty early and didn’t get busy yet. Service was attentive and quick.

Spring roll: Latte started with a spring roll, which she had no complaints about. It looked fresh and crispy!

Vietnamese coffee: Latte also ordered a Vietnamese coffee, which she enjoyed.

Pho: I decided to try a staple, which tells a lot about a restaurant. It’s hard to mess up pho, isn’t it? Well somehow they did end up messing it up.

The noodles came stuck together in a lump at the bottom of the bowl. Usually noodles are precooked which is completely fine, but it would have been nice for the kitchen to quickly stir out the noodles before serving.

After stirring and trying to loosen the lump of noodles, they were unfortunately soggy and way too overcooked.

The broth was pretty standard, but the soggy, overcooked noodles were very distracting and ruined the pho for me. There was an average amount of beef inside but the beef balls were on the small side.

Bun bo hue: Latte’s bun bo hue noodles were also overcooked and soggy like mine. Bun bo hue contains a different type of noodle than the pho so I guess they overcook their noodles here. Latte enjoyed the soup though, and it had a good amount of spice.

Overall, the dishes left not much to be desired. It was a forgettable experience to me and I was expecting more.

Nay!

Mr. Red Cafe – Revisit

June 10, 2019 Leave a Comment

Almost 3 years ago, I wrote about my first visit to Mr. Red Cafe. Since writing that post, the restaurant has moved one block down to a newer location.

This visit was from March and I wasn’t going to write about it again, but now I feel like doing an updated post on it!

Mr. Red Cafe is quite popular for Vietnamese food, and for good reason! I don’t come here that often, but I do enjoy the food here and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

Pho: I ordered the standard pho with rare beef and beef balls. The broth here is fragrant, flavourful, and has depth. In addition, they do not skimp out on the cilantro and onions! I was really satisfied with their pho and it was consistent with my past visits.

Lemongrass chicken: Cola was pretty satisfied with her lemongrass chicken too. The portion was quite big so she had enough to pack for lunch the next day.

Sticky rice mung bean dumpling: This is my must-get at Mr. Red! I normally don’t order this at other Vietnamese restaurants, and don’t even know if other places offer this. I introduced this to Cola that evening and she enjoyed it too!

I would recommend sharing this because the sticky rice makes this quite filling. The inside contains grounded mung bean, pork and crunchy peanuts. It is a savoury delight with different textural elements, with the chewy sticky rice, fluffy pork floss, and crunchy peanuts.

I find with Vietnamese food, I usually just go to the closest/most convenient place. There aren’t many Vietnamese places I’d purposely make the drive to if I wasn’t in the area. However, Mr. Red Cafe is one of the places where I would purposely make the trip to even if I wasn’t in the area!

Chau Veggie Express

April 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

Chau Veggie Express is a vegan Vietnamese restaurant, which is quite popular with both vegan/non-vegan people. Avocado and I have been talking about visiting Chau Veggie Express for at least 2 years now.. and we finally went this month! Woo!

Chau Veggie Express is located on Victoria Drive, which you wouldn’t expect because it’s not really a hipster-fied area (yet). I ain’t complaining though, because parking is free and easy to find in this area.

The restaurant is tastefully decorated, with many communal tables and a patio outside.

After ordering at the counter, they gave us a wooden slate with a number on it and our food arrived shortly afterwards. It was time to dig in!

Taro chips: Avocado and I started with the taro chips, which we saw a lot of other tables order as well!

We both really enjoyed the dip, which was an organic tofu dip similar to the texture of hummus. There was a garlicky flavour along with some spice (due to the paprika).

Candlelit lantern pho soup: Due to my digestive problems, I decided on just sticking with the traditional pho. I’ve never tried vegetarian/vegan pho before, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. If I’m being honest, my expectations were a bit lower.

But damn, was I impressed with this broth! It was very fragrant and in particular, there was a strong star anise flavour. While I was eating it, I kept thinking how did they manage to make vegan pho taste this good?

My only complaint would be that it was lacking toppings. For $11.75, I would have hoped to have more than a couple pieces than daikon, tofu, and 1 beancurd though…. I could have gotten a lot better value with regular pho, but you do pay a higher price because it’s vegan.

Golden temple soup: Avocado went with their curry soup and a bowl of quinoa! I had a spoonful of the curry and found it to be delicious as well. The curry was fragrant and sweet. It was on the lighter side as sometimes curries are thicker and creamier.

There was a generous amount of cooked kale on top, as well as some mushrooms, tofu, taro, and more things! A lot more toppings in this bowl compared to my pho.

Coconut pandan ice cream: I heard their vegan ice cream is amazing, so I obviously had to try it! This was my favourite dish of the evening. The vegan ice cream was rich and creamy, due to the coconut milk. It was very refreshing and well rounded.

The toasted coconut chips on top was the cherry on top! I would stop by and order this ice cream to go.

Strawberry lychee smoothie: Clearly, I wanted to try a lot of the menu that day! The smoothie was my least favourite and I wouldn’t order it again. There were so many ice chunks in it which made it not enjoyable to drink. It had a tart flavour and was too watery.

All in all, we enjoyed our meal at Chau Veggie Express and were glad we finally tried it! It’s not a place that I would come to regularly because prices are bit higher with not much substance and I like my meat dishes, but this place would be one of my top picks for vegan food in Vancouver.

DD Mau Chinatown

March 27, 2019 Leave a Comment

DD Mau Chinatown has been on my radar for awhile now! I went to the original Yaletown location probably over 5 years ago, when they were just starting. Back then, they were only serving banh mi (Vietnamese subs) and I remember they were AH-MAZING.

So, it was time I finally tried their second location, and I brought Latte along with me! She has also been to the Yaletown location and enjoyed it.

DD Mau Chinatown is located on Pender Street, and it is easy to miss without the punny poster board.

The restaurant is quite narrow and dark inside without any windows, so we weren’t really a fan of the ambiance. Their tables were also these metal, stainless steel type tables reminiscent of surgical tables at a hospital.

But, that was quite minor considering how tasty and satisfying our food was!

Iced Thai tea latte: Latte started off with an iced Thai tea. She enjoyed it and had no complaints about it.

BBQ Duck banh mi with a fried egg add-on: For $15, this better be worth it! That’s the most expensive banh mi I’ve ever seen.

Thankfully, it was delicious and Latte enjoyed every bite. It was full of BBQ duck, and lots of fresh veggies inside. She was glad that she ordered this and was very satisfied with it. I’m glad to hear that their banh mi are still delicious (albeit pricey!).

Rice roll: The rice roll came with lemongrass beef, herbs, and vegetables. I had a few bites and it was delicious. The beef was very fragrant and the herbs just elevated the taste. It finished with hints of mango. So good!!!

Pho: For myself, I wanted to see how good their pho was! At $13, it was more than I was used to paying so I hoped it would be good.

And…. It was! The broth had a lot of depth and was savoury and flavourful. It came with a very generous portion of meat balls, rare beef, and flank – more than it looks in the photo!

Overall, we left very satisfied with DD Mau. I would definitely come back.

Song Huong Vietnamese Restaurant

March 4, 2019 Leave a Comment

After trying Got Pho a couple of weeks prior, I wanted to try Song Huong Vietnamese which is only about a 3 minute drive away.

The reviews looked promising, and I remember one of my aunts had said really good things about this place years ago, so off we went for lunch. However, I found it pretty disappointing.

Song Huong is a run down, hole in the wall restaurant (without the delicious food aspect so actually just a run down, shabby joint). The restaurant has definitely seen better days.

They have decorated the restaurant with plastic vines and fake fruit on the ceilings, which I found made the place look dirtier because they didn’t look dusted for awhile. There was also an abandoned dusty fish tank with dried algae stuff on the glass… not very appetizing at all.

Pho, small: I ordered a simple pho but substituted it with round rice noodles. Taste wise, it was a bit flat but passable. Definitely not the best I’ve had. I was mostly disappointed at how small the portion was.

After a few bites, I was done! Usually, a small size is enough to fill me up but I was still so hungry after.

Lemongrass chicken: The boyfriend’s lemongrass chicken came with crispy skin that was full of lemongrass flavour. However, the actual chicken meat itself did not have any flavour and was quite bland. It seemed like they only seasoned the skin.

He had no complaints about the spring roll, which came with pork and veggies.

Bun bo hue, small: This was perhaps the most disappointing dish of our lunch. On the menu, the bun bo hue was touted as their house special. Even on their signage out front, they advertised their bun bo hue (see first pic). Many reviews online said it was delicious too, so my mom gave it a try.

Just like my pho, the bun bo hue was very bland and flat. We found it hard to comprehend how this was one of their most famous dishes. The portion was also quite small and not worth the price. Good thing my mom had ate some breakfast prior to coming here so she wasn’t that hungry to begin with.

Pho, large: My dad was smarter and ordered the large pho, which filled him up.

I left still hungry and disappointed with Song Huong. The food was bland, portions were small, and the place just looked dirty. I don’t have a problem with hole in the walls joints if they are actually delicious, but this place definitely was not.

There are so many other Vietnamese places to choose from. I would rather go to Got Pho or Basil Garden for Vietnamese food, both of which are under a 5 minute drive from Song Huong.

Perhaps we came on a bad or off day, but I would be hesitant to come back here again.