The salad wrap is pretty standard. I think it is pretty hard to mess it up.
The pho looks good. Veggies are crispy and the raw beef slices are showing a beautiful hue of red. And the soup base is not overly "sweetened" with MSG like some other places.
My seafood vermicelli arrived. I have the option of choosing dry noodle or noodle in soup, so of course I choose dry noodles with soup on the side :p Even though the seafoods are just blanched, but the sauce and caramelized shallots worked nicely with all the ingredients. It is quite a light and refreshing dish.
This crepe dish is unlike anything I have seen. It is a crispy crepe with prawns, beef slices, and bean sprouts cooked and folded inside. The way to eat it is to crumble the crepe and sprouts, choose a leaf of either mint or basil, wrap everything in a piece of lettuce, and dip in the Vietnamese fish sauce. The crepe is flavourful, the herb and fish sauce is very refreshing and appetizing, and it is fun to eat with your hands.
The only negative of the night is this caramelized ribs. It is a very salty dish, no veggie at all, and ~13 pieces of bite-size rib ends costed $12. We need asked for some blanched sprouts to go with the dish to wash out the saltiness. However the server was nice enough and did not charge us for the sprouts.
Other than the ribs, the food is great, the servicers are very nice and smiley, and you can tell they have many loyal customers that return to the place over and over again. Overall it was a great experience. Compare to other Vietnamese restaurants, Mui Ngo Gai have a great variey in its menu with things you don't see anywhere else. And it was an inexpensive place that you know you will be back to experience the entire menu.
The ribs are to be eaten with rice. They are made quite strong as traditionally the Vietnamese had little meat and a lot of rice so the dish is made very strong so you need a little to go a long way. If the dish was made to be eaten alone there would be much less salt but to keep it authentic it is salty. Did the server give you rice to eat with the pork? Here is a recipe that even calls the dish salty http://www.recipezaar.com/Vietnamese-Caramelized-Salty-Pork-Thit-Kho-212297. I guess I will have put a suggestion on the menu that tell the customers that they need to eat the dish with lots of rice. As for variety we are currently in Vietnam looking for new dishes to add to the menu, have some great ideas from the city of Hue in central Vietnam.
ReplyDelete