Vietnamese Food

During my time at RIT, I grew to love eating Vietnamese food, especially in the winter time. Having a hot bowl of pho was what we were always looking for when the wind chill was ridiculous. For a person that usually waits for her food to get lukewarm, I used to wallop my pho within minutes of it reaching the table. Oh how I miss those days.

I was at Takashimaya with a colleague looking for things to buy for the destitute that we would visit that week in a home for our corporate responsibility program and we ran out of time to actually catch a good meal, since we started at the Daiso in ION. Further adding to that, having a meal at the ION foodcourt isn't the cheapest thing in the world; we also couldn't find what we were looking for at that Daiso (still prefer the IMM and Plaza Singapura Daiso as they have more variety) so with a hop and a skip we went over to Art Friend in Taka. Having not taken breakfast, after we finished up at Art Friend, I pestered my colleague to grab some food with me at the new food court (maybe not so new... I think about 1/2 year old).


The place is no longer as cluttered as before, but just as difficult to grab a seat. I saw Pho Hoa and I had been craving Vietnamese food for months ... so I went ahead and got me a bowl of Phở Chín, Nạm, Gầu, Gân, Vè Dòn and Chả Giò. The pho came in a big bowl and was nice, although I've had nicer around town, but I can't complain. The accompanying garnishing was on the stingy side. The disappointment that I had was that they did not give the sweet sauce or the proper chilli sauce to go with the Pho, nor was there a selection of it at the stall itself; so I helped myself to some chilli padi. The Chả Giò wasn't as nice as I expected it to be... a bit on the soft side.

For a nice Chả Giò recipe see Rasa Malaysia's Vietnamese Spring Roll recipe. You can also check out this Vietnamese Beef noodle soup recipe.

Chả Giò - A kind of spring roll (sometimes referred to as egg roll) – deep fried flour rolls filled with pork, yam, crab, shrimp, rice vermicelli, mushrooms ("wood ear" variety) and other ingredients. The spring roll goes by many names - as many people actually use (falsely) the word "spring roll" while referring to the fresh transparent rice paper rolls (discussed below as "Summer Rolls"), where the rice paper is dipped into water to soften and then rolled up with various ingredients. Traditionally these rolls are made with a rice paper wrapper but in recent years Vietnamese chefs outside of Vietnam have changed the recipe to use a wheat-flour-based wrapper.

Phở Chín, Nạm, Gầu, Gân, Vè Dòn - Noodle soup with brisket, flank, tendon, fatty, and crunchy flank.

Ah, I just remembered before my experience at Pho Hoa, I did have vietnamese pho in a bowl. I don't exactly remember where I found this instant noodle, but it was a pretty good quick fix. Some may find this a bit on the salty side, but it warmed my tummy up on a cold rainy day in the office!

Vietnam

Fried Calamari

Baked Oysters

Vietnam is an amazingly polluted place, but I got to admit, most of the food we tried there was amazing, or so I believe it to be. I didn't eat much, but I know Satellite really enjoyed herself there! But after awhile you get all Pho'd out ... everywhere you look there's Pho ... we would've loved to try the sandwhich thing but unfortunately it was an extremely street type snack ... take a look at some of these pics, I'll try to get satellite to post more when she does have time! By the way, these pics are from the first meal we had ... and it only cost like probably USD$30 inclusive of drinks and stuff.

Clams in a White Wine Sauce

Coconut Beer Prawns

Bento Box Sets at Hue Restobar!!

Aaaaaaaah...... Wot lewks lyk a lazy, loungey evening.... Wif..... San Pelligrino inna wine glass??!!!

I had 'Blood Orange' & he had 'Lemon'. Comes 'free' wif d bentobox set. Doesn't he lewk lyk a midget?

My set came 1st... I had d 'Authentic Vietmanese Set'. Wow! Wot a spread!

Chicken sald fing... Dere was v lil chicken... all of 3 lil pieces...

Fried calamari rings. Not bad la.... Lyk unbreaded calamari rings lor... haahaa... Mind, all dese items are in sample size... Mebe even smalla dan sample size....

Stuffd Chicken Wing & Deep Fried Prawn Spring Rolls! Jian's Favourite dish is d spring rolls... Is nice n crispy! Tasty asso.... D Chicken wing impressed me cos d bones were taken out & dey restuffd d cavity dat was left behind... Fer presentation, I gif 8 points... Fer taste tho, I gif 2. Bland one.

My Beef Pho!!! Yum Yum YUM!!!!! Next time wen (& if) we go back to eat, I wan to eat JUS d beef pho!! At dis price, tho, mebe nowt so soon....

Black Glutinous Rice Pudding (i fink). Not bad... Lyk pulot hitam liddat. Afta dat heavy meal, I din want anyfing too sweet, & fankfulli, dis wasn't....

Valentine's Dinner at Hue Restobar

So it was Valentine's Day and I had made reservations at Hue Restobar at the Amara Hotel. It was supposed to be a surprise (surprise as in dunno what to expect, not surprise as in WOW!) for Sumdumful, except Simon didn't know it was supposed to be a surprise and told her I was gonna bring her here. Anyway, we have walked past this place several times but had never really paid much attention to it.

Hue Restobar (pronounced as 'Hway')
Our Vietnamese Restaurant and Bar, offers authentic Vietnamese cuisine in a contemporary and minimalist interior. It is the perfect setting for a sumptuous lunch, a romantic dinner or a relaxing after-hours hangout.

I had picked this place because they were offering an affordable set dinner including glass of red/white wine. I was expecting more of a Vietnamese menu (perhaps presented french style), but it turned out more like European food that's slightly Vietnamese influenced. Well, not that I'm complaining actually.

When we arrived, the restaurant looked pretty good with its minimalist decor in dim lighting and rose petals strewn around on the floor. However, they were playing mushy love ballads which made me cringe at times. Sitting through an entire dinner with mushy love songs is overkill and unbearable if you ask me. I really hope they play better, more appropriate music like chillout, lounge music on normal days as the ambience would have been a million times better!!

We were the first to arrive, which was good in the sense that it kept the suspense for us as we couldn't see beforehand how the next course would be served. I'm sure we must have spoilt the fun for the rest of the couples everytime our courses arrived! Bwahahahaha!

They promptly served us our wines when we sat down. The first course was Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Seafood Quenelle. The soup was very delicious and it an excellent smooth, creamy consistency. The Seafood Quenelle is something like a poached dumpling made with mashed seafood - a bit like a soft fishball with seafood flavour.

The next course of starter was this Warm Salad of Scallop and Endives Duck with Grand Marnier. Interesting flavours nicely presented. It made me look forward with anticipation to see how the rest of the courses would be like. Sauce can look sexy sometimes if drizzled sexily on a plate.

This was my choice of Main Course - Spring Chicken simmered with Red Wine and Grilled King Oyster Mushrooms. I wasn't sure there were any Grilled King Oyster Mushrooms on my plate though. I think the chef somehow decided to serve it with Sumdumful's Cod instead. :-S

The aforementioned Sumdumful's Grilled Cod Fillet with Braised and Crayfish Sauce. The slices you see are probably the grilled king mushrooms that should have been on my plate. HAHA. The cod was delicious. OK, actually, cod is almost always delicious, but this cod was pan seared perfectly and the sauce complemented it beautifully.

Eat finish already. Full. Burp.

Dessert - Champagne Sago Soup with Summer Fruits. We couldn't really taste any champagne in the sago. The summer fruits were an assortment of berries (strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrents etc) cooked with sugar until the juice reduces into a sauce. However, it was way too SOUR. Not enough sugar.

Ok, at least the Chocolate Pralines were nice.

One glass of wine each is never enough for us. We also drank some draft Hoegaarden.

Yes, this "I Love You" cushion is mushy. But not my fault, it's free! At least I HOPE it is, cuz I took it from the table. And it's smooth and nice to squeeze.

Overall, it was a pretty good experience, the food was good and thumbs up for the service. Pity about the music though. *EEeWWW*

Redemption for our palates at Nooch!

Because of that horrible meal we decided to give our palates a treat at Nooch over at Paragon ... the experience was so much more superb, except for the fact that the lights basically were shinning at my face which in turn made the whole expereince warm .....

Gosh ... no matter what seems like I always have something to complain about ... hahahahah

Food was great ....

We shared a yummy salmon sashimi salad, Satellite had Thai Beef Soupy Noodle thing, and I had the Thai Curry Noodle thingy ... don't really remember the name but it was all good ... no complaints on the food ... just the temperature of the restaurant and the 2 loud hongkies making like they know all the people in the busy body chinese magazines .... muahahahahahah

I'm not supposed to post this photo up ... muahahahahahahahahahahah

Anyway in a rush to get going to Cafe Iguana ... yay ... never really had drinks or food there.