Hoi An is a great example of a restaurant I wouldn’t have known of or gone to without the help of our friend the internet. That’s right, the internet is not just for funny cat videos and Rebecca Black covers. Despite working a block or two away for four years, like Dona Cata, I had never ventured in that direction until now. It seems I’m not the only one though. If you decide to go to Hoi An Cafe, you should probably know that it’s quite popular at the moment even though hot bowls of pho don’t really go well with sweltering summer heat. Our party of 10+ had a long table all to ourselves but many people were waiting outside for what seemed like ages for a spot in the small Vietnamese restaurant. Is it worth it?
Personally, I’ve never though of “pho restaurant” as synonymous with “clean”. In fact, many of them aren’t for people that use doilies. Pho Lan, for example, was known between my friends and I as “Dirty Pho” for the perpetually greasy tables and sticky floors. Actually, it’s quite a bit cleaner now than when I first started going there if you can believe that. No one goes for pho thinking they’re going to get three-star service…or even one-star service…but if you want a hot bowl of rare beefy goodness, those are the places you turn to first.
None of that is true about Hoi An. The walls are white and I’m almost sure that was the color they’re supposed to be. There’s modern looking paintings and LCD televisions on the wall rather than unidentified stains. The wait staff is friendly, quick, mostly got our orders right and we almost convinced a smitten Aaron Koo to use “The Naked Man” maneuver to possibly win one of them over. What’s most surprising is that I ordered something that wasn’t really on the menu (on the recommendations of…the internet) and instead of telling me to go to hell, they already knew what I was talking about and were happy to get the same thing for Greg and Stephen as well. What on earth was going on?! I don’t know about you but this seems like The Twilight Zone if no one gets my order completely wrong or charges for having nice days. We expect the grime and poor service because that’s usually where the best food is. Does Hoi An’s food match the smiles and cleanliness?
The menu isn’t quite as extensive as many other Vietnamese restaurants in town. There’s only a few different dishes and a small list of appetizers but really, no one orders half the stuff on the menu of other pho restaurants anyways so keeping it small probably works to their advantage.
The spring rolls looked more like the sort Chinese people never order at a Chinese restaurant and not the crispy fried tubes of goodness you usually find with pho.
The filling is actually quite nice and the wrapper is crispy but for $5.50 for 3, I’d rather have the usual kind of spring rolls I get at Happy Pho and the like. I saw another type of spring roll that had a whole shrimp in each and that looked like a much better dish. I’ll probably order that next time instead.
The popcorn chicken ($5.50) was something I expected from a Taiwanese bubble tea joint and tasted a lot like what I’d get at, for example, Twinkle 2. The chicken is coated with a layer of crispy, crunchy goodness and is juicy on the inside.
I would like a little more flavor…perhaps better seasoning right out of the deep fryer but as enjoyable as any other examples of the same dish.
The main event was this, a Hoi An Special Mi Quang ($7.75), which is pork and shrimp broth served with wide yellow rice noodles, pork, shrimp and mixed green herbs. However, this is a “#1 with #2 sauce”, which means the pork is sauteed and mixed with a sauce before it goes on top of the noodles.
It’s an interesting take on “dry pho”, similar to that of Phnom Penh or Pho Thai Hoa. The noodles are thick and wide but cooked to a nice bouncy al dente.
There’s also lots of bits of pork, four or five shrimp and mixed with crushed nuts, bean sprouts and various herbs which made for a lot of interesting flavors.
There’s already bean sprouts in the bowl so there’s no need to add more but we still got a plate of stuff we’re supposed to mix in with the noodles. I’m told the stuff that looks like chow mein on top is banana blossoms (really?), which have a strange, slightly bitter flavor to them and I didn’t really notice it after mixing it in with my dish since the bean sprouts provided enough crunch already. We noticed that there were mint leaves in the greens, which gave some bites shocks of refreshing flavor and it works really well in contrast with the savory, almost caramelized flavor of the pork and sauce. A rough chop of the mint would’ve been better, I think, to meld flavors a bit more instead of getting the odd bite with a whole leaf but still, interesting and delicious. Also, doesn’t that plate of greens look like the freshest, cleanest plate of veggies you’ve ever seen at a Vietnamese restaurant?
There were also these crispy, black sesame (and puffed rice, I think?) crackers which we used to scoop bits of pork and nuts at the end. All that ordered the Mi Quang loved it. Aaron almost licked his bowl clean.
I can’t really compare it to the dry pho found elsewhere because those have a different variety of ingredients (liver, for example, is missing at Hoi An) but it’s a great bowl of noodles and you wouldn’t have to do much convincing to get me to come back for another.
We also had the usual ice coffee and lime sodas, which weren’t any different from the stuff we get elsewhere.
Hoi An is a bit of an anomaly as we expect pho restaurants to be the Asian equivalent of a greasy spoon diner. No frills and questionable cleanliness but good food. Hoi An, on the other hand, looks like it was opened yesterday and still has very good food. The appetizers I tried were either slightly disappointing or average but my Mi Quang was fantastic. Prices were roughly on par with other pho places but cleanliness, service and decor were all a notch above and the staff speak perfect English. Everything tasted fresh (none of the veggies had any sign of wilting and everything looked like it was washed) and prepared with care. Heck, the Mi Quang even looks quite nice in terms of presentation.
My only complaints are perhaps that there’s not much parking in the area and the restaurant is quite small so it might be frustrating to get a table. Also, Hoi An doesn’t have air conditioning at the moment but the ceiling fans and open doors keep the air moving inside so that it wasn’t much of a problem. Still…eating a steaming bowl of soup on a hot summer day might prove this to be a problem but otherwise, this is a great little Vietnamese restaurant…one that I’ll be going back to soon.
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Everything is so good and great from hoi an cafe
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