Pho Cali heats up rainy autumn day

(Credit: Jessica Bratton)

Don't fear the Pho

Don't fear the Pho – there's something for everyone

There is always a certain amount of risk involved when you decide to dine out somewhere you've never been, featuring a foreign cuisine you've sampled just once or twice, if at all. But you hope the meal will speak for itself and the reward will far outweigh that initial risk.

For the three of us, that was the situation on a lunch trip last week, when we popped by a four-month-old Vietnamese restaurant on Kirkwood Highway in search of bowls of hot soup and authentic noodle and rice dishes.

The restaurant is Pho Cali, named for its predominant menu item, pho, a traditional beef and noodle soup.

But when we entered the eatery on a cold, rainy day, the initial feel wasn't exactly warm. The room was chilly in both temperature and aesthetics, with simple green and white booths, chairs and tables, and a few paintings hanging on the wall. The shouting presence of "Deal or No Deal," on the TV, rather than some softer dining music, didn't help either.

And though there was a bit of a language barrier with our waiter and the menu offered little English explanation of the Vietnamese script, we quickly made our decisions based on the primary ingredients and waited patiently.

For about five minutes.

Our food came out just about immediately, beginning with an appetizer of the summer rolls (goi ngon sen, $10), stuffed with sprouts, noodles, lettuce, shrimp and pork.

The four rolls were wrapped in a cold, soft rice paper, but crunched with each bite, thanks to the abundant ingredients within. The peanut sauce that accompanied the appetizer was sweeter than spicy, but we had an arsenal of spicy sauces on the table to help with that.

Included at each booth is a caddy filled with small plastic ladles for soup, plastic chopsticks, and an array of sauces, including a red pepper liquid that'll blow your top off, followed by the slightly milder sriracha and soy.

Minutes later, our entrees arrived. Two piping hot bowls of pho came out first, along with plates of the traditional accompanying ingredients, like basil, lime, bean sprouts and peppers that my lunch partners would add.

They had selected the chicken pho (pho ga tuoi, $7.95) and the vegetable and bean curd pho (pho rau cai dau hu, $6.95). Luckily and smartly, they both decided to skip on the pho tai sach ($6.95), a tripe pho that sounded a little too heavy on risk, not enough reward.

Both were pleased with their dishes, one featuring a robust chicken bone broth, the other a light, vegetable-based broth, swimming with rice noodles, veggies and the requisite main items (chicken or bean curd.)

As for my entree selection, I skipped the pho and instead went with the seafood fried rice ($8.95), which included your standard fried rice items (egg, rice, veggies) as well as shrimp, scallops and squid.

The flavor was other worldly, in that it possessed a subtle sweetness that I hadn't encountered before. Manager Willis Duong would later let me in on their fried rice secret -- they add a bit of honey to each dish.

We brought back a few items to the office for others to try, including the beef sauteed with lemongrass on rice vermicelli (bun thit bo xao sa ot, $6.95). The lemongrass went a long way in waking up the dish's overall flavor.

When all was said and done, we'd not only fed four hungry people lunch for under $50, but we all had leftovers for the next day. At Pho Cali, they're definitely giving you your money's worth, which can be very rewarding on its own.

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