My Chau

My Chau
1715 Kingsway
Vancouver, BC

On the night Anita, Mijune and I watched Did You Hear About the Morgans? (as mentioned here), we went to Breka Bakery (which Mijune blogged, here). Due to some wacky circumstance, we went through Kingsway and, while driving through, we were mentioning about different good spots for food in this Vancouver main road, including House of Dosas, which was blogged here. Another place that was mentioned was My Chau which seems to have some really good pho…

Now, if it is so good, why it has flown below most blogger’s radar? Well, actually it was blogged previously in Foodosophy (post here) some time ago and more recently by The Friday Lunch (post here). However, there was one more reason I wanted to come here: Anita’s visit to Lam Hoa Quan where she had Pho Ga (chicken based pho) rather than more “usual” Pho Bo (beef based pho). And according to Gastronomydomine (of Foodosophy) and Karl (of The Friday Lunch), they make a really good Pho Ga. While that is all good, there was one hurdle: They are closed by 6:00 p.m.! But, one weekend, I finally managed to squeeze some time.

While having chopsticks and spoons on the table is not unusual, I don’t recall seeing spoon and forks!

When I arrived, it was already past noon; however, it was packed full. In fact, I had to wait for a couple of minutes for a table to open! And, even after I was seated and given the menu, I had to wait for several minutes for them to drop by to take my order. Talk about being busy! However, once I made my order, the rest was pretty much fast.

While they do have other items in the menu, there was one dish I was going to order… Sort of. While Pho Ga is what was mentioned previously, they have three of such dishes: Mien Ga (special chicken with clear noodle in soup), Pho Ga Don (deep fried chicken with rice noodle in soup) and Pho Ga My Chau  Dac Biet, which has… Well, this is what I ordered!

Yup, pretty much everything chicken but the kitchen sink… Oh, wait, let’s try again: it has chicken, liver, gizzard, quail egg and chicken ball. As expected, the most flavourful piece was the liver; however, it is also a bit of an acquired taste so not everybody will enjoy it. The gizzards were cut nicely, which resulted in a slightly chewing texture but not too chewy. Similar to the liver, it had a strong meat-y taste. The chicken balls were OK, as it had a “springing” texture. It tasted lightly like chicken but, well, what would you expect here! There was a single quail egg. I believe it was mostly token and I could have easily lived without it. Tastewise, it wasn’t that different compared to a chicken egg. Finally, the chicken meat was composed of both white and dark meat. I will have to admit, even for dark meat, it was a bit bland. I wished it had some side pepper to make a dipping sauce as Anita did in her post. The noodles were similar to a lot of other pho places so I won’t comment about it. Finally, the broth. It was both good and bad. It was clear and had some chicken taste, as expected; however, it was somewhat uni-dimensional and lukewarm. I mean, you tasted the chicken (though somewhat light) but there wasn’t anything else. I thought some additional herb-y (saw-leaf herb, et al?) taste would have worked great. Still, I enjoyed the broth.

In the posts mentioned above, fried chicken was version was ordered. To “make up” for it, I ordered a side order of the chicken leg just to check how it taste. It was great I must say! Unlike other versions of fried chicken, it had no batter –  I am not even sure they dusted it with flour prior to frying. Along with its sweet and vinegary dipping sauce added additional notes to the basic chicken taste.

Despite it was quite a drive, somewhat difficult to park and wacky hours, I was quite happy with my meal. Sure, not perfect but, then again, nothing is perfect… The fact it was full after noon sharp it showed it has its followers.As for myself, I will try to come back but there are still other pho shops nearby to try, hehehehe.

Tagged under: Kingsway • Pho • Vancouver • Vietnamese