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Savor the flavor
By WILMA NORTON © St. Petersburg Times, published August 30, 2000 PINELLAS PARK -- We were in the mood to try a place we'd never been to before. Maybe it's all those Iron Chef episodes we've been watching on the Food Network. We called Pho Quyen and ordered with abandon. We got lucky; almost everything was a treat. A couple of the items likely will find their way onto our list of Vietnamese favorites. Even though we had never been to this restaurant, we regularly eat Vietnamese food. If we hadn't, we might have been a bit confused when we unpacked all the food containers, especially those with the makings of the chicken and rice noodle soup (5.25). The dark, rich broth came in its own quart container. The thin rice noodles, the chunks of white-meat chicken, jalapeno slices, bean sprouts, lime wedges and fresh basil were packaged separately. My husband retrieved a huge bowl from the pantry and mixed it all together, along with a bit of the extremely spicy soy-based sauce that accompanied it. "Oh man, that stuff's hot," he said. That's high praise indeed from him. There was still broth left over when he had eaten all the other ingredients, using the provided chopsticks. He saved the broth to mix with leftovers. Whenever we get Vietnamese food, I almost always get a rice vermicelli salad, usually topped with barbecued pork and sliced egg rolls. I ventured into the unknown this time. Sort of. I still got the salad, thin cold rice noodles with shredded lettuce, carrots, bean sprouts and cucumbers, accompanied by a fish-sauce-based dressing. This time I opted for a topping described on the menu as grilled ground shrimp on sugar cane ($6.95). The ground shrimp mixture, the color of a coral flamingo, had been molded around two stalks of sugar cane and grilled. Then, the shrimp mixture was cut in chunks and scattered over the salad. It tasted a lot like regular grilled shrimp, but was mushier. The sugar cane stalks, about the size of a celery stalk sliced in half, lay on the side. I wasn't sure what to do with them. They were too tough to bite, so I ended up sucking a bit of the sweetness out between bites of the shrimp and noodle mixture. The barbecue beef ($5.50) was a hit with our daughters. The thin slices of beef came over white rice. Our 8-year-old eschewed the sauce that came with it and polished off most of the adult-sized entree. Her 2-year-old sister managed to get a little of the beef and rice. But she preferred the crisp, finger-sized eggrolls ($2.50 for 5). We also got spring rolls ($3 for 2), which contained shrimp, pork, fresh mint, rice noodles and a sprig of green onion wrapped in translucent rice paper. Those came with a thick, hoisinlike sauce. I could make a whole meal of a couple of orders of these. The only thing we didn't like was the deluxe Vietnamese hoagie ($2.50), but only because it contained unfamiliar, spicy luncheon meats. The three meats included something that resembled a salami and one meat with a livery taste. The rest of the sandwich, however, was as fresh as everything else in Vietnamese cooking: toasted hoagie roll, cucumber slices, grated carrot and fresh cilantro. Other hoagie options include shredded pork, grilled chicken and beef stew ($2 to $3.95). I think we would have liked most of those better. Only one thing on the menu costs more than the ground shrimp dish I ordered. The rice vermicelli with regular grilled shrimp is $7.95. Everything else, from the 21 rice noodle soups to the dozen other vermicelli salads to the 14 other rice dishes, ranges in price from $4.95 to $6.50. Most are $5.25. Pho Quyen Vietnamese Restaurant4505 Park Blvd. Pinellas Park Phone: (727) 545-5678 Hours: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday; 9:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Consumers: Two adults and two children What we got: Deluxe Vietnamese hoagie, spring rolls, egg rolls, grilled ground shrimp on sugar cane with rice vermicelli, barbecue beef with broken rice and chicken rice noodle soup What it cost: $26.96 Time it took: 30 minutes Pay with: Cash, credit cards
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From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
