Saturday, April 23, 2011

Pho Saigon

It's been so long since I've eaten here that the last time I did it was called Red Palace.  At that time it claimed to be a Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant.  I guess the opening of the pho shop across from the University changed all that.  Anyway, I had a coupon, which is always a good excuse to eat out.

Pho Saigon has a drive-thru window, and I had an old menu, so I placed my order and drove through to pick it up.  I had the Vermicelli Noodles with Char Broiled Sliced Pork and Shrimp and the Vietnamese Fresh Spring Roll.

In general, it was okay.  The Vermicelli dish was noodles with pork and shrimp, some bean sprouts and cucumber, and nuoc mam (fish sauce).  It was a bit different than the last time I had it!  Originally, the noodles were different.  In other places I've seen them referred to as patter, but I'm not sure if that's the real name.  Those noodles were like a woven noodle mat and the dish came with lettuce and you could make a kind of wrap out of everything.  The new dish is still good, but I liked making wraps (I guess part of me still enjoys playing with my food!).  At least they use real rice noodles, not spaghetti noodles, so that was fine.

The spring rolls contained lettuce, cilantro, sliced pork and shrimp and came with a peanut-style sauce.  I prefer the fish sauce so I dipped my spring rolls in that instead.  They were okay too.

Overall, I guess that's the main thing I can say:  They are okay.  I used to live in Albuquerque, which has excellent Vietnamese food.  I had no idea there were that many Vietnamese people there until I worked for the Department of Labor and the public library in the Vietnamese part of town asked if we could translate some of our brochures into Vietnamese.  So if you open up a Vietnamese restaurant in Albuquerque, it has to be good enough to stay in business.  Pho Saigon isn't bad, but they're just okay.  Three stars.



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