Pho Lien

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Mr. Pho Lien, you’re in my top 5 Montreal Vietnamese restaurant favorites for good reason. You’re always consistently good and in my opinion have one of the best lemon grass chicken in Montreal (except for maybe Hoai Huong on Victoria, Montreal). All your tonkinese soups are great, especially your weekend spicy soup (WSS), sooooooo fabulous, fresh, and so clean (but if u want the best WSS go to Pho Bang on Côte-des-Neiges). I guess your only drawback is that your appetizers are just standard, and your bean drink doesn’t have enough slimy green, red, and yellow things. All and all kind Sir, hats off to ya.
Cleanliness: 9.12131/10
Tastiness: 8.1131236/10

The fact that there’s always something interesting to look at due to the fortunate fact that there’s a lot of crazy people across the street: I’m sorry for being so insensitive/10

Pho Lien Restaurant

Address : 5703-B Cote Des Neiges, corner Côte-Ste-Catherine, Montréal;
Tel : 514-735-6949

Vietnamese Recipes

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1 kg Beef shin bones
350 g Gravy beef
5 cm Fresh ginger, thinly sliced into 2 in length
1 teaspoon Salt
2.5 liters Water
6 Black peppercorns
1 Cinnamon sticks
4 Cloves
6 Coriander seeds
2 tablespoons Nuoc cham sauce
400 g Thick fresh rice noodles
150 g Rump Steak, thiny sliced
3 Spring onions (scallions), finely chopped
1 Medium onion, very thinly sliced

Place the bones, gravy beef, ginger, salt and water in a large pan. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer very gently, uncovered, for 3 1/2 hours.Skim off any scum that forms on the surface. Add the peppercorns, cinnamon, cloves, coriander seeds and nuoc cham sauce. Cook for another 40 minutes. Remove the gravy beef and set it aside to cool. Drain the stock, reserving all the liquid and discarding the bones and spices. Return the liquid to the pan. When the gravy beef is cool enough to handle, cut it against the grain into very fine slices. Set aside. Close to serving time, plunge the noodles into a pan of boiling water and cook them for about 10 seconds only, otherwise they will soften and fall apart. Drain the noodles well and divide them among large individual soup bowls. Arrange the toppings on a platter in the centre of the table. Bring the beef stock to a rapid boil. Place some slices of the cooked meat as well as a few slices of the raw steak into each bowl of noodles. Ladle the boiling stock over the top, sprinkle over the spring onion (scallion) and onion slides and serve. Each diner chooses their own toppings and can also add sauces such as sweet chili sauce and hoisin sauce to their dish.

Pho so 1

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I have so many fond memories of this place. I came to Pho So 1 at least once a week while studying at UCLA. The food is cheap, it came out fast, and right next door is Ranch 99 where you can pick up most anything you'd want to cook for the week. Pho So 1 is also probably one of the best Pho places even remotely close to West LA, and I'm very happy to revisit my old feeding grounds for a meal.

Pho Dzung

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Those who have been reading this blog for some time might realise that pho is one of my favorite foods of all time. My love for this simple Vietnamese noodle dish started from my year long stint in Northern Virginia, and later re-enforced from the 9 trips to Vietnam that I made in my previous job.

During my previous visit to Melbourne, I visited the very popular Mekong Vietnamese Restaurant right on Swanston Street. While it was pretty good, at least a couple readers commented that the best pho is found in Richmond, the Vietnamese community that is located just a few kilometers away from Melbourne CBD.
So on this second trip to Melbourne, I looked up online and found this Pho Dzung place at Richmond that is said to be one of the bests in this part of the world.

Mellissa and I took a train from Melbourne Central to North Richmond and walked a few hundred meter to the east on Victoria Street, passing quite a number of other Vietnamese and Asian restaurants, fresh seafood shops, and Asian grocers before reaching no. 208.
At 3pm, Pho Dzung was still packed with people to the point where we had to be seated upstairs. It was definitely the correct place to be.

Pho Bo Tai

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A trip to the beautiful country of Vietnam will stimulate the senses. Not only will you meet warm and hospitable people, you will also experience wonderful cities filled with life and Vietnam’s serene nature. Of course, you cannot fully experience the country without trying one of Vietnam’s famous dishes, the pho soup.
Pho is a noodle soup which may also include basil leaves, lime, bean sprouts, peppers and chilies. Thin cuts of meat (beef, pork or chicken) can also added to the soup. Other contents of this dish include rice noodles, and meat broth. The broth itself is made by simmering the meat, bones, oxtails, flank steak, onions and several spices. The whole broth making process can take as much as several hours.
Historians, diners and restaurateurs have all come to agree that the soup could have originated from North Vietnam. The dish is distinctively Vietnamese but also has French and Chinese influences. Some have even speculated that the word pho may have come from the French word feu (meaning fire) and also from the French dish pot-au-feu, a type of beef stew. The method of adding charred onions to pho for flavor and color is a technique which distinguishes the Vietnamese soup from other Asian noodle soups and is also similar to the methods used in pot-au-feu. Rice noodles and certain spices (such as star anise and cassia) are staples in Chinese cuisine.

Pho - Noodles

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Pho - Noodles
Pho is the most popular food among the Vietnamese population. Pho is commonly eaten for breakfast, although many people will have it for their lunch or dinner. Anyone feeling hungry in the small hours of the morning can also enjoy a bowl of hot and spicy pho to fill their empty stomachs.

Like hot green tea which has its particular fragrance, pho also has its special taste and smell. Preparations may vary, but when the dish is served, its smell and taste is indispensable. The grated rice noodle is made of the best variety of fragrant rice called Gao Te. The broth for Pho Bo (Pho with beef) is made by stewing the bones of cows and pigs in a large pot for a long time. Pieces of fillet mignon together with several slices of ginger are reserved for Pho Bo Tai (rare fillet). Slices of well done meat are offered to those less keen on eating rare fillets.
The soup for Pho Ga (pho with chicken meat) is made by stewing chicken and pig bones together. The white chicken meat that is usually served with Pho Ga is boneless and cut into thin slices. You could consider Pho Bo and Pho Ga Vietnam's special soups. Pho also has the added advantage of being convenient to prepare and healthy to eat.

Pho Thuan An, Vietnamese Restaurant

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There are quite a lot of Vietnamese restaurants peppered all along Kingsway in Vancouver. I was just searching for “kingsway vancouver vietnamese restaurants” on Google Maps and I counted 14 Vietnamese restaurants. And I think there could be a few more restaurants that Google Maps did not catch.
Many of the restaurants are small hole-in-the-wall types that hardly registers on the radar of foodies. I am not surprised because many of them does look run down and in dire need of a coat of paint.

The Pho Thuan An restaurant is one such restaurant that I would not have chosen to check out on my own. The restaurant, located on Kingsway near the intersection with Fraser, is unremarkable in many ways. Worse still, it is somewhat blocked by a tree that most people will not even know that there is a restaurant in the location.
Even if it is not blocked by the tree, I find that the red letterings on the window does nothing to call out the restaurant at all.

The prices is just about average and in line with the menu you find in most Vietnamese restaurants. The prices hovers around $7 to $8 for rice and noodles dishes with only two dishes at the $12-$13 range. It is the wide variety of Vietnamese food that is the best thing of their menu.
The lady owner told us that they had been operating for six years already. Most of their customers are people who live in the neighborhood. I understand that because they are relatively unknown.
It is certainly a neighborhood restaurant when the customers and the owner chat to each other in Vietnamese. Everyone seems to know each other. Why, even a family who sat next to us chatted us up! And the customer is even very open with us — even telling us the story of how they escaped from South Vietnam when the country lost the war to the north  and how they became boat people, spending 4 years in camps before coming to Canada. Only in a place like this!