Pho Hanoi does, as its name implies, Vietnamese food. Pho (and no, I'm not going to type out the little accent mark for this entire review) is probably the best known Vietnamese dish. It's a noodle soup dish that has a lighter broth. Unlike the soups you might be used to in Americanized Chinese food, Pho is most definitely a lighter soup. Everyone does their own version of the broth that has slightly different balances of usually the same seasoning. In the end though, I'll be the first to admit that I usually find Pho to be a pretty boring dish. When done to my tastes, it can be both subtle and complex. Like most noodle soups though, the reality is that it's peasant food, so it's a straight up mixed bag. More discerning Vietnamese eaters will recognize that Pho Hanoi's Pho is not immaculate. In fact, I'd put it at just OK, and even then it can be inconsistent. If that's all you care about when it comes to Vietnamese food, I don't know what to tell you. Not many other options in Gainesville, so you can either learn to make it yourself or suck it up.
Hanoi refers to, of course, to the Finnish Glam Metal band Hanoi Rocks.
Yeah, didn't expect that.
All the same, Pho Hanoi is in the same strip mall as Indian Cuisine and Lollicup, which I consider the triumvirate of ethnic food in southeast Gainesville. They recently did some rennovations, so the restaurant looks a bit better than it used to. All the same, I care about that roughly none at all, so my girlfriend and I went two separate times for this review to give a decent idea of what they have there that I like. Along with the renovations, they also added some stuff to the menu, and I was very pleased to see a Vietnamese Iced Coffee on the menu. If you are unaware, oh boy do I have some news for you.
Vietnamese Iced Coffee is extremely strong and drips into the cup beneath with condensed milk. It's kind of the perfect drink to go with Vietnamese food. It is to Vietnamese food as the mango lassi is to Indian, the orchata is to Mexican, and high proof liquor is to Russian food. The condensed milk sweetens it up, and the coffee itself packs a punch. I can see the strength of the coffee being a bit much for some people, but I find it to be excellent. It cost about $2.75, but I found that entirely worth it when I'm looking for some good iced coffee.
One of the new menu items that caught my eye immediately was the new sandwiches that Pho Hanoi has added to the menu, called Banh Mi. You can see a nice mix of them on their own sheet. My girlfriend and I decided to try the shredded pork (Banh Mi Bi.)
At $4.25, this sandwich was surprisingly good. It was in the Vietnamese style, which is basically a combination of French and Vietnamese where you have the French bread with more traditional filling. I thought the combination of the carrot, cucumber, cilantro, and roast pork was pretty solid. The roast pork was surprisingly well done as well with a pretty good flavor profile of salty with a touch of sweet. It probably could have been a bit tender, but, overall, a very solid sandwich. The bread was about the quality you can buy at Publix, so I'm pretty sure it's not made in house. All the same, it's a quality price thing.
The first time we went, my girlfriend got the Pho Bo Vien for $7.50. The Pho Bo Vien is a rice noodle soup with beef meatballs.
This is probably one of the simpler dishes they made, and personally, I found it somewhat bland. It's not like it wasn't seasoned or anything. It just didn't feel like it had a lot going on. To some degree, this is sort of Vietnamese comfort food, so I'm not altogether surprised that this is kind of how it is. All the same, noodles in a simple broth with chunks of meat that, if they were seasoned previously, had lost that to the soup making a very uniform taste. There's an interesting textural mix, but you can see that the dish itself is very straightforward, and, realistically, that's not what I go out to eat for. Still, pretty cheap for a lot of soup.
What I got the first time was probably my favorite dish the place does. It's called the Bun Bo Hue. There are supposed to be a ton of accent marks in that name, but eh, you get the picture. In any case, it's marked "spicy," so of course I had to give it a shot. At $8.00, it's pretty affordable as well.
I added the basil and jalapenos that came with the soup to the top, but even without those, this is an awesome bowl of soup. It's got slices of beef and pork in there (though you can only see the pork in this picture.) Was it that spicy? Despite its color, not really. I kicked it up with some sriracha. All the same, the flavor of the broth was way more complex and full. To some degree it's the added spice, but I think the meats actually added flavor to this one instead of the previous dish where the meat is kind of taken over. The noodles really soak up all that flavor as well and were cooked correctly, which usually ends with me eating the whole bowl. You might find a touch of hoisin sauce will add a little sweetness to this soup as well to hit the flavor chart a bit more spot on. It has a touch of sourness, spiciness, saltiness, and that umami flavor that makes everything kind of taste more prominent. Just an excellent dish.
After a couple of weeks, we returned to try some other stuff. My girlfriend got the Hu tieu mi bo vien this time for $7.50. It is pretty similar to the above soup, but the taste was a bit different.
You may think this is pretty much the exact same dish she got last time, but it actually isn't. Well, you can see red onion this time as well, but that's not the only difference. The flavor actually had way more depth this time. I don't know what they upped the ante on (probably a combination of fish sauce and a more concentrated seasoning,) but this time, I kind of understood this dish. With the better seasoning, the meat wasn't quite so tasteless either. It really came together in a lot better way.
Instead of going with the soup bowl, this time I decided to try on of their rice dishes. I decided to go with the roast pork because I'm just a big fan of roast pork. This was the dish I ended up getting. It's called Com Thit Heo Nuong for $7.50.
Compared to some of the soups, this might seem like kind of a paltry amount of food, but it was actually pretty filling considering. The sauce it came with was a lighter sauce compared to what you might expect that went with the rice and the pork pretty well. I ended up just kind of mixing it all together with the sauce and making myself a kind of fried riced like mixture. I put some sriracha on there as well to take it up a bit, and the flavor was actually pretty solid. The pork was salty (as it should have been) mixed with some of the sourness and umami associated with some form of fish sauce in the seasoning. The sauce was sweeter and a bit vinegary which helped to complete the flavor profile of the whole thing a bit. With the added spice from the rooster sauce, it came together in a pretty good way.
You'll notice I didn't say much regarding value. Well, the same thing can be said about all of these dishes. They were all a pretty good value. Even the soup I thought was kind of bland was still pretty reasonable. I grant that a big bowl of hot soup is probably not something people are jonesing for that often here in Gainesville, where hot weather tends to be the norm rather than the exception. All the same, it does fit one branch of Asian food pretty adequately. Considering we still have no decent Thai or Chinese in Gainesville, it's nice to have this place at least taking a solid pass at Vietnamese. Is it as good as what you can get in, say, Orlando? No, but it's not much worse than that either, and with a meal being under $10, it's really tough to complain about decent Vietnamese stews.
