Pho Viet Cafe @ Beach Street, Penang

Pho Viet Cafe is a relatively new Vietnamese restaurant tucked along Beach Street, Penang. Manned by a team of crew whom hailed from central part of Vietname (with the exception of one runner who does the shopping of ingredients at local markets), they prepare delicate and authentic Vietnamese dishes. However non-availability of certain ingredients and local preferences made them to tweak and localize the dishes.

Fried Spring Rolls (RM 12.50) / Nem rán is a good pick as the starter. It is packed with a dense and well spiced shredded meat, giving a crunchy stuffing then well matched the crispy skin. Nước chấm, the sweet, sour and spicy sauce is provided as condiments, but the springs rolls are delicious even without it.

Overwhelmed by the choices of noodles and rice, we settled for Noodles with BBQ Meat (RM 13) / Bún thịt nướng. It comes with Vietnamese cold vermicelli rice, surrounded by basil leaves, shredded cucumbers, roasted peanuts, salad leaves, shredded carrots and topped with the BBQ meat. Spread the condiments given to the noodles and stir it to give a sweet and sour taste to the entire dishes. The BBQ meat was toothsome, and we almost labelled this dish as vegetarian choice if not the BBQ meat.

Beef and Pork Spicy Noodles (RM 16.00) / Bún bò Huế is a dish origin from Central Vietnam. It was similar to our Penang laksa, except the soup is more on a refreshing and diluting version, and not of fish origin. The soup was definitely addictive till we could slurp at least half bowl of it. A plate of basil leaves and shredded cucumbers were provided to mix with the noodles, we felt it mainly serve more of inducing an better aesthetic purposes.