London's best review, food and drink news
By Guy Dimond
King's Cross should be hopping with new cafés and bars in the next year or two as the new developments in the area take shape, but the going is still tough for early pioneers. Low-budget places tend to stand the most chance of success, such as this new Chinese-Vietnamese café (which is no relation to Pho in Clerkenwell). It's a smart and bright place with a disconcertingly long menu - nearly 150 dishes - though on our visit, even the Vietnamese baguettes (a staple of this menu) were sold out.
Skipping the 100 or so Chinese dishes, we homed in on the Vietnamese specialities. Pho (pronounced 'fur' in Vietnamese) is an aromatic breakfast staple of beef stock soup with flat rice noodles, which comes in many variations; we tried it with beef tendon, tripe and beef balls. The stock was on the watery side with no discernable spice aromas, and the tripe was typically British-style, and seemed flavourless after over-zealous cleaning. Bahn cuon is a snack of sheets of steamed rice pasta with a consistency like slithery cannelloni, in this case filled with minced beef; this was a decent version of a 'texture food' that's hard to get wrong. But our final dish was quite disappointing: a bún (salad of vermicelli rice noodles) topped with grilled pork that was slightly burnt. Some fresh and verdant Vietnamese herbs could have made up for this slip, but instead a disappointingly meagre and slightly droopy selection accompanied the dish.
Pho is a handy place to pop into if you fancy eating something a bit different near King's Cross; but if you're seeking Vietnamese culinary finesse, you'd best look elsewhere.
Time Out London Issue 1915: May 2-8 2007
|
|
London's best review, food and drink news
|
|
The best of London in your inbox
Up to the minute picks of the best things to do in London, delivered to your desktop.
|
|
A brilliant find! my girlfriend and i were craving for a bowl of Pho as we had just recently got back from vietnam. The pho served here was amazing, the soup so flavoursome and aromatic topping of lovely fresh sweet basil. We ordered a variety of starters, Banh Xeo, Bo la lop and Goi cuon and they were very tasty. The service was great, very charming! Great value for money, we definately will be coming back here. If you're looking for a nice meal out in the King's Cross area, you need to get yourself down to Pho!