Pho 24: Upscale Phnom Penh Pho, Pretty Tasty

Pho 24
Phnom Penh Center, Building A, Sihanouk Boulevard



Pho 24 is a smallish international chain of Vietnamese beef-noodle soup slingers, and they've got an outpost right here in Phnom Penh.

It's Nice inside, which is kind of a refreshing change from the majority of cheap pho slingers in the city. I liked the aggressive air-conditioning and the serene character of the dining room. No violent movies playing here, I'm afraid, but sometimes it's a refreshing change to eat pho without a side dish of entertainment. A lot of business types from the monolithic office block next door eat here—there were a couple of lunch-meeting gatherings going on around me when I stopped by.




The menu has pho - all the beef pho variants, pho ga (chicken), Vietnamese curries with baguette, spring rolls, broken rice plates, and a couple of other rice-noodle centric dishes. Like all self-respecting Vietnamese restaurants, there's a big selection of mixed fruit shakes and coffee beverages.




I am no pho expert, and I am certain my Vietnamese friends/associates would be able to evaluate pho better then I can. The house special pho here suited my needs: a big bowl, a pretty good, if not spectacular, amount of beefy, herbaceous flavor, and a good assortment of mixed cow parts - beef balls, tendon, and brisket, with sliced onions on top. Wish the assortment o' greens brought to the table was more extensive, though they were fresh and appeared to have been recently washed, which is always a comfort. I ordered a side of kimchi for kicks and was somewhat surprised when I was given, instead of a small dish, a plate of kimchi large enough to feed a small Korean family. I love kimchi, but eating an entire plate of it presents difficulties. Share with your friends?

I am somewhat befuddled by how bad the hoisin sauce used in Cambodia is - the stuff used at the pho restaurants in Sacramento is a helluva lot better. It's tolerable mixed with the ubiquitous Khmer Golden Mountain chili-ketchup stuff, but only just. I am considering carrying around a bottle of good hoisin with me for use whenever I eat pho, which is often. Though that might be construed as creepy.

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa Round Two: Everything Soup! Central Vietnamese food!

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa Round Two
6450 Stockton Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95823
(916) 428-3748



Quan Nem Ninh Hoa is a lovely Vietnamese place on Stockton Boulevard, Sacramento's resident Cavalcade of Asian Restaurants. Living in New Orleans has made me appreciate Sacramento's culinary diversity a lot more then I did before: we have great local cuisine in NOLA, but we definitely don't have the incredible variety of international foods here that we do in California. Quan Nem Ninh Hoa is a good example of this diversity - it specializes in the food of a specific region of south-central Vietnam, Ninh Hoa. The food in this part of Vietnam is spicier then that of the North (which is where pho comes from) and relies more upon side-dishes. Translation: Don't expect pho at Quan Nem Ninh Hoa. Americans do tend to fall into the trap of assuming that the "standard menu" at a given ethnic restaurant, be it Indian, Chinese, or Vietnamese, is a good representative oft he cuisine of an entire country. Far from it: pretty much everywhere possesses super-distinct and interesting regional cuisines that just don't make it to American menus, primarily because a lot of these "weirder" dishes don't sell. (I am perenially amazed that some of India's more approachable regional cuisines haven't taken off in the USA, but that's another story).

The restaurant is famous for their house special pork spring rolls, which I've reviewed before. This time, I decided to try one of the regional seafood soups and a Vietnamese style salad.




This is the Hu Tieu Nam Vang, a soup composed of small bits of pork, ground pork, quail egg, rice noodles, pork liver, poached shrimp, squid, and God knows what else. The surprisingly delicate seafood broth is given an interesting tang with the addition of all those extra ingredients: it's fun to eat. I was, to be honest, expecting something a bit more "difficult" tasting, but tossing in a whole bunch of chili paste made me a happy camper. Pork blood, however? Acquired taste. God speed.



This salad is a standard Vietnamese preparation: shredded vegetables, chicken, shrimp, and a lot of fresh herbs. But what a gorgeous preparation! Quan Nem Ninh Hoa really excels both in attractive food presentation and in maintaining a super-clean and peaceful dining area: that's evident here. A very tasty representation of a favorite. Also dig that gigantic rice cracker.

Quan Nem Ninh Hoa remains one my favorite places in the region for clear-tasting, attractive Vietnamese food. Give it a try soon: you won't regret it. Look beyond the pho, my children, look beyond the pho.

Pho Hien Vuong: Lotus Root Salad, Mysterious Snail Soup

Pho Hien Vuong
6835 Stockton
Ste 400
Sacramento, CA 95823
(916) 391-8538

Pho Hien Vuong is one of Stockton's multifarious pho joints, located right across the street from the (dearly beloved) SF supermarket. I am not entirely sure if I can identify anything in particular that differentiates the space within, other then that it is clean and Nickeloden cartoons are usually playing for the benefit of little-kid diners. The food, however, is quite tasty, and the menu provides some interesting selections that don't always make the cut at other Vietnamese eateries.



A lotus root salad with shrimp and pork. Delicious, light and fresh, and presented extremely attractively. This is one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes - something about the interplay of sweet tangy fish sauce dressing, crunchy lotus root, shrimps and pork is just the perfect thing, even more so on a good hot day. Which it wasn't when I ate this, but, ah, no matter.



My dad went with the perennial classic of beef stew, complete with the tendony bits that give him so much pleasure. A nice rich beef broth, with a good amount of flavor, and plenty of miscellaneous "stuff."



I always seem to order the same thing here: the special noodle soup, with snails, crab, ground pork, and some other miscellaneous stuff (including congealed blood cubes, which i am distinctly ambivalent too). The soup has a gamy, seafoody, delightful flavor that is rather hard to find in another dish, and is elevated any ore with the addition of shrimp paste/sambaal/large amounts of hoisin. I am a big advocate of Soup With Stuff In It and this really fits the bill.


Pho Hien Vuong is a nice option for a good Vietnamese meal if you're out hunting for weird Asian food products on Stockton, or just need some snail-and-crab soup in your life. Check it out.

Pho Quyen: Fish Sauce Galore in Tampa, Florida

Phở Quyên
( Hillsborough )
8404 Hillsborough Ave.
Tampa, FL 33615
Tel: (813) 885-9424

I always like to have a good Vietnamese restaurant nearby. This is a universal desire of mine, carried across state and international lines: if I can't get my fish on in a timely fashion, I get all nervous. Thus I was thrilled when a Vietnamese restaurant opened a mere five minute drive from my grandparent's house in Tampa, and was even more pleased when I discovered Pho Quyen was uncommonly good. A few years later, the food is just as tasty and the service staff just as efficient, dishing up some of the more unusual Vietnamese specialities (Salted eels and frog legs, anyone?) to an appreciative and diverse crowd. I recommend it highly.



My first visit, I ordered my beloved papaya salad with pork and shrimp, with a fish sauce dressing. A very nice and fresh rendition, though it could have used a little more cilantro (Sez I). This is about the perfect hot weather meal when you're congenitally unable to eat anything involving pork grease or fried food, and those days happen a hell of a lot in Florida. (I am amazed people actually manage to be fat down there, but humanity is a fascinating and multi-faceted thing). Yeah, I love papaya salad to distraction.



I also scored with these pea greens, a weekly special. Pea greens are my favorite Chinese vegetable, with a flavor pleasantly in between spinach and bok-choy. These were prepared perfectly, with a lovely roasted-garlic flavor, and cooked just-long enough for maximal succulent crunchiness. Aces.



My grandmother and I returned for lunch a few days later. First up was the make-your-own-spring-roll plate, a tremendous $10.95 dollar platter full of a protein of your choice (lemongrass pork for us), vermicelli noodles, daikon and carrot, bean sprouts and other vegetable fixings, and plenty of rice paper wrappers. We ended up having enough left over for two more meals, and the pork had a nice, meaty lemongrass flavor. However, don't be fooled into believing you will roll pretty lovely spring rolls yourself. It is a lie. Your spring rolls will look like misshapen abominations before God, but at least they will taste pretty good. I don't know how the hell little old Vietnamese ladies manage to roll them up into delightfully symmetrical little packages, but it probably involves a chicken sacrifice ritual. Everything worth knowing involves sacrificing a chicken.



My grandmother tried the pho and deemed it mediocre, although she said it perked up considerably when she added various condiments to the shebang. I thought it tasted pretty good post-doctoring but cannot assess pre. Finding good pho is a mysterious art, and the really annoying thing is that good pho in the same restaurant as good entrees is well-night impossible. Hopefully I will be able to taste pho in Vietnam someday soon and thus be able to haughtily proclaim that I KNOW what pho ought to taste like and that is NOT IT to all who ask. Which they probably won't, but I hold out hope, I really do.


If you find yourself suffering a fish-sauce related attack of cold sweats, vapors, and ungodly pain fathomless to man in the West Hillsborough region of Tampa, direct thyself to Pho Quyen and order some Vietnamese stuff. You'll be much happier.