Portage and Pho Vietnamese mainstay adds downtown location and brings its delicious soup recipes By: Alison Gillmor Posted: 7:00 PM CST Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/11/2018 (2488 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pho Hoang’s original venue has been a favoured West End destination since 2010, and the owners have been on an expansion kick. They recently added Rollesque, offering roll-style ice cream made right in front of you, to the adjunct space next to their main Sargent Avenue location.

And now there’s a new downtown Pho Hoang, serving the lunch crowd on Portage near Main but also going into the late evening.

It may be a small spot, with a handful of tables and some counter seating, but it offers a full menu of reliable Vietnamese specialties, from some stand-out soups to a range of rice- and noodle-based dishes.

The pho is good. (It’s in the restaurant’s name, after all.) I particularly like the rare beef option, in which the meat comes super-thin-sliced and raw and cooks just a bit in the hot, rich broth.

Also good is the deluxe wonton soup, which combines a herby broth with egg noodles and fat dumplings of barbecued pork and shrimp.

The duck and egg noodle soup is fabulous, with a big whole duck leg, with browned skin and meat just falling off the bone, in a complex, anise-scented broth.

For starters, tempura prawns are crisp but the breading is a little too emphatic. A better bet is the sugarcane shrimp, in which a garlicky shrimp paste is wrapped around a stick of sugarcane and grilled, infusing the seafood with a touch of sweetness. Maybe the best option of all is the sweet potato and shrimp crepe, with sticks of sweet potato and small whole shrimp crisped up as spiced fritters.

The pre-made salad rolls were a little under-flavoured, but the wrap-your-own option, which comes with wrappers and ample ingredients for eight rolls, is terrific, available with meat, seafood or tofu options. We tried skewers of charred shrimp. This also allows for individual customization, handy if you have pro-mint and anti-mint factions at your table, for example.

For rice vermicelli dishes, the menu lets you mix and match your protein, allowing for vegetarian options, and there are also possible add-ons, from spring rolls to Chinese sausage. The sampled barbecued beef short ribs were good, the thin-cut meat nicely tender-chewy, though the bean sprouts were a bit weary.

A caramelized lemongrass chicken, served with plain or eggy fried rice, is excellent, the citrusy undertones of the chicken playing off against the dark char of the onions.

There is no liquor licence, but drink possibilities include young coconut water, served with swirls of soft coconut flesh, and extravagantly coloured Taiwanese bubble teas — you can get fresh-fruit versions for a price upgrade — as well as Vietnamese coffee.

Sampled desserts were a bit of a letdown. The mochi ice cream — little balls of vanilla and green tea ice cream encased in a sweet rice paste — was a bit icy, maybe freezer-burned, while the Japanese-style roll cakes were dry.

The small, high-ceilinged venue has a warm, well-lighted feel. Dinner service is obliging but sometimes inefficient when things get busy — on one night, dirty dishes weren’t removed before dessert was brought, for example.

Overall, though, the qualities that have made Pho Hoang a Winnipeg favourite — good Vietnamese food and some great pho — have made the move to this new downtown locale.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca

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Alison Gillmor
Writer

Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.

   Read full biography