I came here with some healthy scepticism. This wasn't really my first choice but today I have a plane to catch and I don't want to wander too far from the hotel. I also don't want hotel breakfast.
This was right in the heart of the tourist belt in District 1. It also has that tyre company endorsement which means a lot of its customers are tourists (with all that that implies 😅).
Anyways.. I need to make the best of my last hours in Ho Chi Minh City for this trip, so here I am 🤷
I opted for #5 which was a mix of shank, flank, tail and ribs. I thought it would be a good way to try a bit of everything like a good Singaporean 🤭 No "fancies" like tripe on the menu though.
The noodle and beef shank came separate from the bowl of beef soup which has flank, tail and rib inside.
The bouquet of aromatic greens was just sufficient and I believe they would oblige if we request for more.
The soup came furiously bubbling, steamy hot.
It was cloudy bone stock type which tasted savoury beefy with a subtle underlying tanginess. (Glad it was not the mirepoix vegetable and sugar type stock.)
First things first, I dunked the aromatic greens and beansprouts into the scathing hot soup. Be careful with the metal bowl as it was super hot.
The best thing in the bowl for me was the fresh rice noodles. I like it that it was the fresh type rather than the usual rehydrated dry type. It's like freshly made narrow cut chee cheong fun but slightly thicker.
The thick flat noodles were soft tender, has rice sweetness, slurpy smooth especially when wet with soup which also gave the sweetish strands a savoury beefy layer of flavour.
The oxtail was chewy, fibrous, with leathery firm, almost hard skin. There was very little, if any flavour. It was simply blanched, neither stewed nor boiled for long to tenderise the meat and skin.
I won't choose oxtail for pho again here.
The rib was like the tail but sans the skin. The meat was hard, fibrously chewy and clung to the bone stubbornly.
The flank was cooked to well doneness (as specified in the menu). Not much beefiness, so those who don't like beefiness in beef will enjoy this. (I know it is an oxymoron but I know quite a few people like this 😅 The people who also don't like chicken taste in chicken, pork taste in pork..., that type.)
oops I said it 🤭
The raw beef shank which I have to dunk in the hot soup was good, soft tender moist with the beefiness and sweetness I like in my beef.
If you need a fix of pho and don't want to go too far away from District 1, Pho Viet Nam is a good choice. The best thing here is their rice noodles. Get the beef shank for the best beefy taste and soft tender texture, plus perhaps tendon which can't go wrong. I also want to try their fatty flank.
Very slight premium price over other pho places in the same area but well worth it, just for the fresh rice noodles alone.
Restaurant name: Pho Viet Nam
Address: 14 Phạm Hồng Thái, Phường Bến Thành, Quận 1, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Tel: +84 90 268 2214
Hours: 6am - 3am
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Written by Tony Boey on 9 Mar 2024
🎗 Opinions in this blog are all my own as no restaurant paid money to be featured.
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