The state of Vietnamese food in Canberra is actually surprisingly decent. For example the closest pho I'm happy to visit is at Fyshwick market, with a broth good enough to make me happy, and much better than the best London has to offer. I've also heard good things about Griffith Vietnamese, but that will be for me to judge another time.
Pho Phu Quoc also has a great reputation and also helped along as I met the owner at work and she was a lovely person. There seemed no better reason to finally get around to trying this restaurant. I had heard the banh xeo was very impressive and it was with some disappointment that when I turned up for dinner, I learnt it was only available for lunch. Nonetheless there were enough other things to try:
- Green papaya salad - crispy, thin slivers of the pickled vegetables, some prawns and a good nuoc mam cham sauce;
- Chilli mussels - large delicious green-lip mussels with a garlic, soy, fish sauce dressing;
- Pepper fish in claypot - well textured fish chunks with savoury flavour;
- 3 colour drink - the che ba mau ended up consisting of 5 colours. I prefer the shaved ice to be a bit finer to aid in dissolving but at least it isn't ice chunks.
After not being able to try the banh xeo, a lunch meal occurred a couple of weeks later. Other than this, the other dish I had on my mind was bun thit nuong. Unfortuately the restaurant does not serve this, however they were able to create me a dish similar to this using a pork chop and also nem nuoung. It was great!
- noodle dish of unknown name (bun thit ...??)
- Sugarcane prawns - sweet chewy grilled sugar cane with a prawn cake that pulls off nicely to make a rice paper roll;
- Banh xeo - large and pretty using a particular recipe using coconut milk (which is not for everybody). It was good, but I liked the other dishes more such that I can see myself coming back for dinner.
I'm keen to try the pho (given the name of the restaurant) but would be quite content to order anything Vietnamese on the menu. I do find it a little unusual that they have some Chinese and Malaysian dishes - unusual because the Vietnamese food is very good and also there is Dickson Noodle House and other Chinese restaurants all very close by. In any case the Vietnamese is very good homestyle cooking and that is what I'm going back for.
07-2015
The restaurant has now officially moved out of the old premises to a new bigger place around the corner. It still has a friendly feel but it does seem a little less cosy and traditional than the old.
- Pho bo - finally tried the restaurant namesake dish. It was quite good, with the broth having a more medicinal flavour to it. It wasn't as strong and rich as the Fyshwick market Vietnamese bakery version, which still remains my choice in Canberra;
- Bo kho - the traditional breakfast beef stew had an excellent rich flavour that went very well with rice. The beef was a bit too overly fatty meaning there wasn't much meat to enjoy. But what was there was good.
I probably wouldn't order either of those dishes again. It's more that I prefer the dishes I've had there previously instead.
