Le Do Vietnamese Restaurant
2292 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Ah… East Hastings… An area I use to frequent but, ever since I quit Magic, I haven’t dropped by at all. It is not that there is something wrong. There are some good grocery shopping places, like Freybee’s outlet store (at Hastings and Victoria) if you are looking for cold cuts or sausages, Donald’s Market is a good option (Hastings and Nanaimo). And then there are “unique” eating places like Bao Chau and Seri Malaysia. Could it be traffic in the area? I don’t know. However, by pure sheer of events, PO and I ended up in that area and I “suggested” we give Le Do a try.
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Tagged as:
Pho,
Vancouver,
Vietnamese
Tau Bay Restaurant
10660 98 Street NW
Edmonton, AB
To most of us, pho appears to be that quintessential Vietnamese dish, along with banh mi. It is can appeal to almost everybody and can easily be adjusted to even neophytes to this cuisine. After all, if we break it down to basics, it is noodles, broth and some meat. Toppings in the form of bean sprouts, Thai basil, ngo gai (sawleaf herb), jalapeño, et al, plus some lime are on the side for the dinner to adjust to suit his/her taste. However, because a lot of people haven’t been to Viet Nam, myself included, I have no yardstick; instead, I can only make assessments base on what I like. However, there are also times where you have fanatics, people who deem that a restaurant has a certain je ne sais quoi… That is the case of Tau Bay Restaurant. How popular is this place? How about it not being open year round and, as a result, people have even created a site just to confirm it is open/closed… At that point, well, you simply can’t help to find out why people has reached that point. I guess the only way for me to find out is to visit it.
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Tagged as:
Edmonton,
Lunch,
Pho
Pho Century (Kingsway and Sperling)
6701 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post on Pho Century. Almost in no time, Karl of The Friday Lunch wrote back a comment about his subpar experience, not to mention they were opening a second location. Curiosity got the best out of me and let’s just say I had to visit it…
Update: Due to some interesting coincidences in life Sherman shokutsu of Foodosophy, wrote a post of this location as well! Check it here.
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Tagged as:
Burnaby,
Pho,
Vietnamese
Pho Century
4429 Kingsway, #14A
Burnaby, BC
After I came back from San Francisco, I noticed something really odd: in the last year or so, I have changed a little bit my activities. In the past, on Fridays, I used to go to a game shop in East Hastings to play Magic: The Gathering and, afterwards, it was a search for good eats. Nowadays, well…, just leave it there… 
Anyway, one night, on my way back home, I was driving back through Kingsway and, as expected, hunger hit and then the usual question: Food, where and what? I was in such a hurry that I stopped by a Marketplace IGA just to grab something quick just to notice a Vietnamese restaurant in the far corner. Well, it is there, it is open, so why not!
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Tagged as:
Burnaby,
Pho,
Vietnamese
Delightful Cuisine
1745 Robson Street
Vancouver, BC
For good or for bad, in the couple of blocks near the corner of Robson and Denman in the West End, you tend to get more ethnic restaurant than other parts of Downtown Vancouver. For Japanese, you have different ramen places like Santouka, Kintaro and Motomachi, izakaya like Kingyo and Guu. Then you have several Korean restaurants like Kim Bob Chun Gook, Nor Boo Korean Restaurant, Ap Gu Jung and so on. For Thai, you have Khunnai Chang and Tangthai. However, given there is only that much space in the West End, this growth has come to the expense of others restaurants. For example, Rooster’s Quarters in Denman closed some time ago to be replaced by Pomegrante, which failed as well to now be replaced by Dajia, a Japanese restaurant, which over saturates the existing market. Notice I didn’t mention some that, otherwise, would be ubiquitous like Chinese (there is Main Dining Restaurant, Chongqing, Hon’s and Legendary Noodles) and Vietnamese. Ah, Vietnamese, the one that a lot of times is overshadow by the other ones mentioned above. But, then again, their presence in Downtown is a bit muted and it seems they focus more in the Kingsway and Fraser Street area instead. So, to a certain extent, having one nearby seems to be a good thing. When Delightful Cuisine took over the former spot of a French restaurant (which confirms the above), the question was would it fulfill those expectations?
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Tagged as:
Downtown,
Pho,
Vietnamese,
West End
Pho Tam
10302 135 Street
Surrey, BC
In what seems to be a crazy trend for posts on this week, similar to what happened on my post on Tuesday, for today’s post, I ended up in the Whalley area of Surrey. Now, to those not familiar, this used to be (and, to a certain extent, still) considered a criminalised area. However, times have changed and with the SFU campus in the area plus new condo constructions, it can be considered an upcoming area of sorts. After running an errand in the area (which did not involve anything green, leafy or powdery), it was close to lunch time and had to consider possibilities. Given that I am not that familiar with the area, I dropped a text message to Sherman asking for suggestions. After all, he frequents the area so often that have had close encounters with the police! 
His first suggestion? “Pho Tam”. OK, that was good enough for me!
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Tagged as:
Pho,
Surrey,
Vietnamese
Tràng Tiên
9449 Jasper Ave
Edmonton, AB
Finally, my posts from Edmonton! As suggested a couple of weeks ago, I went to Edmonton for BC Day/Heritage Day long weekend and, finally, I am catching up with those posts, hehehehe. Actually, at this point, I am starting to wonder if the posts in this month of August will be mostly non-BC based… Other than Minoas Greek Taverna (a min-gathering suggested by Elaine) and Mui Ngo Gai, all the posts so far have been from Tacoma and Edmonton. But, wait, what about the rest of the month, there are still weeks to go, right? Well, yeah… In part! Because, as possibly suggested by some tweets (here and here), I just came back from Portland! (And, yes, there will be some food carts!).
But back to Tràng Tiên… Not sure if you might have or might not have caught up but, when I wrote in last Friday’s post of Mui Ngo Gai, I made reference to “a reader” suggesting order other dishes in addition to pho or banh mi. That reader happened to be Trinh who was my host during my trip in Edmonton. So, putting things to test, I asked Trinh if she could take us to a place she would go for pho or, in her case, bún bò hue. And that’s how we ended up going to Tràng Tiên
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Tagged as:
Edmonton,
Pho,
Vietnamese
