confessions of a graphic designer: Pho Tan

Finally, we had a celebration for my mom just yesterday. We pre ordered the special secret menu there which consisted of Beer Crab, Lamb chops, Oxtail and Shrimp. You have to call ahead for the special items. For the 7 of us we started off with the chicken salad. This was delicious. Not to overpowering with the fish sauce and it was light and a great start to our meal. Second was the lamb chops. These were amazing. One of the best lamb chops I had. The char on the meat was so tasty. Grilled to perfection not overly dry but super tender and moist. We had the beer crab. I'm not a fan of crab and it was alright. The soup was bitter from the beer and it was basically crab steamed in beer. Apparently you can also have the choice to put noodles into the soup after your done with the crab. But we weren't a fan of the bitter alcohol taste so we skipped out on it. We also had the BBQ skewered shrimp. These pieces of shrimp were nice and big and juicy. Great grill flavor. We had the raw beef carpaccio with fish sauce to dip in. The meat was still a little frozen but the flavors were there. We had to try their specialty of their satay pho which had Thai flavors in it. The noodles were a little on the soft side and the meat was rather tough but the broth was good. We had their bun bo hue as well which is the spicy noodle soup. The broth was clean but the noodles were also overcooked. We ordered the beef skewers that was overly try and tasteless. We also had a tong ho choy stir fried with shrimp paste. They gave us very little choy and the shrimp paste flavor was very muted. My mom makes it better. We had the oxtail with fresh french bread to dip the sauce with. The meat fell off the bone. The flavors weren't too overpowering and the bread was very good. Overall, my first traditional Vietnamese meal and I loved it. My thoughts is to always order what they are special or known for and you can't go wrong. Next time I need to try their sour fish soup.