The Vietnamese food that I adore comes in one shape – barbequed or actually grilled I think is the more technical term. However, that doesn’t mean that I’m not willing to give other shapes and sizes a try. Tonight I caught up with Pauline and Sandra and we decided to check out Pho which had a cool 50% off food offer on top table. Pho has had one restaurant in Clerkenwell, near where my brother lives actually, since 2005, a second branch opened near Oxford Circus just last year and a further third branch in the mega shopping mall that is Westfield at Shepherd’s Bush. Tonight we were checking out the Oxford Circus branch.

Pho markets itself as a street food restaurant specialising in the title-name Vietnamese dish, Pho (a noodle soup) but also serves a few other dishes – mainly noodles but also a couple of rice dishes and a variety of appetisers. Disturbingly their drinks menu is larger than the food menu!

We decided to share two appetisers between us and then had one noodle dish each – choosing from the three varities: Pho, Bun and well, stir fry (I can’t remember what the Vietnamese word for it is.) We started our meal with the Goi Cuon Tom (summer roll with prawns) which is basically a cold spring roll. The dominating flavour in this spring roll (of which you get two which are then sliced up to give you four pieces) is mint. I didn’t taste much of the prawn but at least it was quite fresh. Our other appetiser was Banh Xeo Tom Ga (a Vietnamese crepe filled with prawns, chicken and beansprouts.) I wish I’d taken a photo of the crepe – it was basically crispy fairly thick batter fried (it looks kind of like an omelette but has the consistency of something like a parmesan crisp only thicker) which was folded in half and in between lay the filling. You are supposed to break up the crepe and then put bits into a lettuce leaf which you wrap and eat. Interesting concept but difficult to make the lettuce last through all your filling and I thought a bit disappointing in the meat ingredients. We had more then enough beansprouts on the other hand!

For our mains Sandra tried a Pho Tai Bo Vien (steak and meatballs), Pauline the Bun Cha Gio Bo Xao Sa (lemongrass beef) and I went the stir fry noodle with lemongrass beef. All were quite tasty from all reports though by the time that both Sandra and Pauline (both their servings were ginormous) finished the ingredients and interesting bits of their respective dishes they were left with quite a lot of noodle. My serving was a bit smaller but being a bit greedier anyway I managed to finish mine off. It was fairly tasty and rather spicy, especially after I added the Nuoc cham (a kind of chilli garlic fish sauce thing) it was quite a lot spicier.

Service at Pho was very good. Friendly and efficient though I didn’t like the fact they served my juice warm (I think Pauline’s drink was also warm) and they did at one stage forget to bring Pauline her requestes fork! There is good atmosphere in Pho because it’s a relatively cosy venue and has a constant turnover of patrons so its quite loud (but not as loud as somewhere like, say, Wagamama) and with a good buzz.

Overall, Pho is pretty decent value even without 50% off though they could do with upping the ingredient to noodle ratio in their dishes.

However, though we were done with Pho, the night wasn’t quite over. We could have easily finished our evening there Pauline and I had dreaming of waffles ever since we walked past a couple hot waffle stands on the way to dinner so we trooped off to Häagen-Dazs in Leicester Square. Unfortunately couldn’t convince Sandra to indulge – her resistance was too strong! The last time I had a waffle was in the Häagen-Dazs in Brussels so the waffles here had a lot to look up to. Mine is the dish on the left, the one on the right is Pauline’s. Unfortunately the waffles weren’t quite up to the same standard but the ice cream – oh the ice cream – divine. I could not go past the Caramel Apple Crumble and Coconut Macaroon (yes two scoops.) Yummmm!