A while ago we decided to plan a day trip to London and one of the few things we properly planned was the food stops!
I often make pho at home because when I first found out about it I still lived in East Yorkshire and surprisingly, there is not a ton of Vietnamese restaurants around (read: none) and when I moved to Nottingham I was really hopeful about the potential Vietnamese restaurants but somehow I managed to move to the only major English city without a significant Chinatown!
Long story short, I was really looking to finally trying proper pho! The idea was to go to Kingsland Way in Shoreditch which has been dubbed by Time Out as the "Pho mile" but we got out to Shoreditch and had a wander around Old Spitalfields Market before Google mapping our way to the Pho Mile and although it was a lovely day, walking far in London is never appealing and we then realised we were standing opposite Pho, the Vietnamese chain and just decided to go there instead.
We went inside and although I felt like we were almost "cheating" by having our first "real" Vietnamese pho experience at a chain, I was impressed by the decor, it definitely had a lovely little cafe feel and I think we really lucked out with our timing as we managed to get a little table in the window and it was a beautiful sunny day so we had a lovely view of a Brushfield Street and the edge of Old Spitalfields Market.
I ordered the Pho Tai which is thinly sliced beef steak, which is the type I make at home and Sean ordered Pho Tai Chin, which was the sliced beef steak like mine but also with brisket. They came in pretty much the proper way (from what I've gathered from looking online) the big bowl of broth with the noodles in and a side plate with beansprouts, chili, a wedge of lime and a lot of herbs, the only thing that I wasn't expecting is that it came with the beef already in the soup, which I didn't have an issue with.
The soup itself was great, the broth was lovely and meaty and just so tasty! I added all the beansprouts and a big squeeze of lime into mine as well as one of the little chili, without the seeds as the waitress had warned us they were very hot and we are not wonderful with spice! I was also very impressed with the noodles, as usually I use the thin rice noodles from Tesco, and I've only once used the flat udon noodles and I found them awful and slimy yet the ones in the pho were so lovely!
I have now been dreaming about this pho for a good while, and am definitely going again next time I'm in London! They also have a cafe in Leeds which I've seen before but never been convinced about because it was a chain, not an opportunity i'll be passing up again! Also, I didn't even ask about the dairy free aspect because I always find Asian food is great for me as the chances of them containing dairy are so slim, it only the obvious things that you have to worry about. Pho recognise this too as on their menus they have a little comment at the bottom about the fact that they are extremely unlikely to have dairy in, which is nice for peace of mind! They have many locations across London and a few in other places in the country, their website is www.phocafe.co.uk which has all the details about them you could ever need!
