Pho Bac

While I was in Dallas, I had a hankering for some Vietnamese food. One of my friends was keen on this idea and the other not so much, but he was a willing participant in the search of killer Vietnamese cuisine. I think he wanted to eat some familiar American breakfast. It seems that we are one of the only countries that eats a different set of things for breakfast than our other meals. Don't get me wrong, I love bacon, hash browns and pancakes, but we do do things different in the US.

Dallas is a much larger market and has a large Vietnamese population so I wanted to see what the city had to offer. I did some research and chowhound.com recommended Pho Bac in Richardson. When we walked in there were some things that would indicate the "safeness" of the quality of the food. We saw two large flat screen TVs which is an indicator of a Vietnamese or Asian restaurant. The other indicator of how good the food may be was all of the Vietnamese people. The place was fairly large and could probably accommodate at least a hundred people. The place was clean and all the tables matched. We were promptly seated. The server was quick and polite, but not memorable by any means. Which is both good and bad, but he was adequate. I thought it was interesting that the menu had pictures of the food and it was a pretty stripped down menu for a Vietnamese joint.

Pho broth had a lot of anise spice and sugar. The broth was good but not great. The egg rolls we ordered came out soggy and greasy. I think the cause of this was the oil in the fryer not being hot enough. The contents of the egg roll were standard for a Vietnamese egg roll, but these were a bit fatter that what I am used to. The spring rolls were bad. One of the pieces of shrimp was not cleaned well enough and had some black stuff remaining on it. The bulk of the contents was the vermicelli. The sauce that it was served with was a brown peanut sauce that I forgot or failed to try. My brunch companion loved it though. He asked if I knew how to make the stuff and my answer was it couldn't be that hard, so I will be chasing down a recipe in the near future and consulting some five feet tall Vietnamese women that I know. I did have a chance to try the grilled beef on the Bun dish. The meat was grilled well and the taste was good, but not great. I would give Pho Bac two and a half stars out of five.