I Love Pho 264

264 Victoria St, Richmond 3121
Date visited: 9th December 2012

We dropped by Richmond for some pho today.  It was completely full downstairs but fret not, there was more seating upstairs. 

The upstairs seating area was reminiscent of a hawker centre, deafening with echoing noise and cutlery, tissue boxes and condiments stacked on each table.  Every table got their own flask of tea.

A few minutes after sitting, a waitress came to take our order.  Whereas there was a menu board downstairs, there wasn't one upstairs.  The waitress seemed surprised when we asked for a menu, so I'm assuming most of the customers here are regulars.  

Our table was a bit dirty so we cleaned it ourselves.  Now, the waitresses serve humongous bowls of pho slopping soup onto big trays they were carrying.  I thought it was odd how they put the trays on our table (right in front of AS and I) to serve the pho to our neighbouring tables.  The waitress apologised as she walked off with the trays, leaving our table covered with soup again, which we had to clean a second time.  Sigh.

Our food came not too long after.  We all had the medium size and the portion was massive.  We actually didn't know there were different sizes as the waiter who came to take our orders just asked us if we "wanted medium?"  I wasn't sure if he meant the size of the dish of how we wanted our beef done, but before I could ask, he turned to take orders from MerlinFan and AS.  I found out later that apparently you could have small for $8, medium for $9 and large for $10.  Neither that, nor the pricing was on the menu.

Back to our food.  As I mentioned before, the waitresses had soup slopping over the edges of the bowls onto the big trays they served the pho on.  As she served MerlinFan her bowl of pho, a stream of soup from the pool on the tray trickled down from the bottom of MerlinFan's bowl into my bowl.  Ew!  I couldn't help wondering how clean the tray was, and if they even washed it.  @_@

MerlinFan had the pho with beef balls.  She liked the beef balls over the actual slices of beef.  They were nicely seasoned and had a bit of crunch.

Pho with beef balls & beef (medium) $9

AS and I both had the pho with sliced beef.  The broth was cloudy but tasty, and I didn't need to add anything else to it.  The beef was tender, soft and juicy, however I noticed some of my slices had a really strong meaty taste, almost akin to liver.  I hate liver, so I can't say I truly enjoyed it.  I guess different people have different tastes - MerlinFan didn't notice the odd flavour to her beef and AS felt that this was what she expected her pho to be.

Pho with beef slices $9

Raw ingredients

We also ordered the Pork rice paper rolls but we were too full to finish them.

Rice paper rolls $8

Overall, not the best pho I've ever had, but AS and MerlinFan were happy with their lunches and our four dishes only came up to $35.  

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