Somewhere at about the half-way point during our trips, the Missus always asks me, "are you missing anything?" And usually, it's noodles. Strangely, on our last vacation we ate so well that I only started missing noodles, at the end of our trip……yes, I realize we were in Rome and all, but it was Asian noodles, in any form….
Anyway, here's a short collection of revisits…..
Pho Tay Do:
**** Pho Tay Do has closed
I first posted on Pho Tay Do back in 2010, Cathy followed up a year later. For some reason my mind just blanks out places in this strip mall; I'm not sure why.
I actually hadn't been back here in over a year and was wondering what the state of the Bun Mang Vit – The Duck and Bamboo Shoot Noodle Soup was.
There were a couple of tables occupied when I arrived, but the interior was pretty dark. I guess they're trying to keep the energy bill down.
I ordered the Bun Mang Vit which arrived in the blink of an eye.
I don't know how business is, nor how the current state of the economy or anything else is affecting this place, but in terms of what I had it seems to have fallen.
The broth wasn't hot and had very little flavor. There was hardly eny of the earthy reconstituted dried bamboo and maybe 2/3 of the noodles of the bowl I last had here. The portion of dipping sauce was smaller and though it still has a nice hint of ginger, it too tastes watered down.
The slices of duck are smaller and very dry. Even though the place never provided an abundance of herbs in their greens, this was just about all cabbage……
This was pretty sorry overall and a mere shadow of what I'd had in previous visits. Sad…..
Pho Tay Do
5296 University Ave
San Diego, CA 92105
Santouka (for the zillionth time):
Yeah, I know…I won't even post the links. A couple of weeks back, I took my coworker, "YZ" to Yamadaya, I was interested in what She thought.
On this visit, the pork cheek was spot on, tender and full of flavor. The noodles were done perfectly as well. Hard combination to beat.
So when I quizzed Her, the opinion was pretty much the same as ours. Pork and noodles Santouka, broth Yamadaya. So I guess it depends on what you're in the mood for, right?
The Missus asked me if the perfect ramen existed? I could only shrug my shoulders……
Santouka Ramen
4240 Kearny Mesa Rd(In the Mitsuwa Marketplace)
San Diego, CA 92111
Minh Ky:
Yes, Beef Sate Noodle – Dry, again:
Needless to say….it delivered as expected.
Minh Ky Restaurant
4644 El Cajon Boulevard
San Diego, CA 92115
Pho Cow Cali:
Before we left on our trip, the Missus was strangely craving Pho….something that rarely happens as I'm the Pho eater in the family. The craving lasted for a couple of weeks and there's just so many times you can go to Pho Lucky. The Missus can be a rather hard nut though…..once She finds something She likes it's hard to convince Her to try something else. I did explain to Her that Pho Cow Cali's protein was better and that they had Filet Mignon Pho!
Which was just fine for Her….however, once She saw this on the menu:
She determined that I just had to have the Com Tam Dac Biet….without com tam (broken rice). And so it came to pass that I had mine with brown rice.
First, let me explain that I'm not a fan of brown rice. Then to add insult to injury, they charge you $1 more. Of course they probably don't sell too much brown rice, so this took forever……it was also very low quality. The Bi was good, the pork chop and cha ok, the brown rice, just wrong. Nuff said….I tried it once.
Pho Cow Cali
9170 Mira Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92126