Noodle Soup Cravings - Pho Chu The, Footscray

Loathed to raise this again, it's horribly cliché but Melbourne's frivolous weather continues to totally baffle me. A mere day ago we were sweltering through the city's hottest November day ever as the mercury hovered around 38°C for most of it, and yet this morning we woke to the wettest day in several years with temperatures cool enough to have to dig our sweaters out of the back of the closet again. If we'd a similar constitution to pet fish in an aquarium, this rapidity of change would've guaranteed to find us all floating belly up on the surface.

Bowl of phở bo mixed with herbage, lemon juice and plenty of bird's eye chilli just the way I like it!

The morning's rain and greyness had us lingering in bed till late but once up and thinking about food, the only brunch craving that insistently crept into mind for a need to be satisfied was a piping hot bowl of soupy noodles. Luckily for us, Footscray is only the next suburb away so it didn't take any deliberating to find ourselves walking into Chu The for large warming bowls of phở. As usual for the two of us, a medium bowl ($8.50) each of phở bo (beef) and phở ga (chicken) were promptly ordered, and I also fulfilled my first caffeine need for the day with a strong hot Vietnamese coffee syrupy with sweetened condensed milk. There's nothing much to share about the venue itself, it's a rack-standard phở joint albeit quite a small one and wholly dedicated to the Vietnamese breakfast staple. Springrolls to whet the appetite are about all you can stray away from the bowls of noodles. Choices are pretty much limited to one's preferred size of bowl, beef or chicken, and to what extend one would like to add associated offal and viscera to accompany the sliced meat (blood cubes, tendon or brisket for beef, and liver or giblets for the chicken). Order the Special for the complete experience. Lingering uncertainly over these selections when the waiter asks for your order will more than likely produce an impatient look to get with the programme.

We have visited the place quite a number of times and it's always full of local suburbanites on their grocery shopping break so there must be something going for it. Chu The produces satisfying enough bowls of phở, not the best and not the worst in Melbourne though I'm now somewhat surprised that I hadn't really been dedicated enough to have kept a phở track record. But here's my breakdown on Phở Chu The.
Pluses:
- Generous amounts of soup and meat, more so than any bowl one is likely to find in Vietnam.
- Beef slices always added to cook through in your bowl and thus served perfectly pink.
- Slices of chicken breast meat also tender and not overcooked nor grainy.
- Okay depth of flavour in the broth though lacks the heady spiciness and pepperiness of some establishments.
- Great rice noodles left with requisite bite.
Minuses:
- Limited variety of herbage with only basil and sprouts and wedge of lemon supplied.
- Chicken can include some pieces with gristle attached (and even non-chicken bits such as tripe!) if one does not expect or care for that; and beef can be untidily sliced and prone to clumping.
- Chicken broth always lacks the punch of the beef, though this is the case everywhere.

Walking outside warmly satiated and full of soup, we looked up and saw a patch of blue sky. Did they or did they not say it was going to keep raining!

Food: 14/20 - Phở or phở.
Service: 14/20 - Efficient, impersonal, inoffensive.
Value: 16/20 - Standard.
R-Factor: 16/20 - Sure, unless I can remember better elsewhere but close by.
Spot Score: 15/20 - See Pluses and Minuses.

Pho Chu The
92 Hopkins Street, Footscray VIC.
[There's another outlet somewhere in Little Saigon, Richmond]

For Footscray local and Food & Travel writer, Phil Lees' take on Chu The, visit his food blog "The Last Appetite".

Footscray Welcomes the Ox

Though I could continue to reflect back on the food encountered on a recent trip to Hanoi, there's really no reason to when similar action is currently happening right here in Melbourne! We hopped on the train last Sunday to join Footscray's Lunar New Year festivities on Hopkins Street, held a little earlier this year so as to not coincide with the Australia Day long weekend. The local Vietnamese community was out in force under beautiful blue skies to welcome in the Year of the Ox and to showcase the fantastic array of celebratory food they have to offer.

Happy red and gold lions welcome in good luck and prosperity for the new year, and scare away evil spirits from the previous one.

One of the many stalls selling celebratory treats for families to enjoy streetside or take home for later. Pork floss ideal for adding a final flourish to one's Bahn Mi.

Rows of barbequed sweet corn came complete with handles.

Skewered Bo La Lot (marinated beef-mince rolled into betel leaf 'ciggies') in chargrilling procession and $3.50 per stick. These were smoky and delicious!

Stallholder kept busy frying up cubes of rice cake (Bot Chien) with egg. A fiver got us a medium takeaway container's worth. Tastewise a little bland and definitely needed boosting from the soy sauce with cut birdseye chillies supplied, plus a further layering with garlic chilli paste from the large help-yourself jar.

More deepfried goodness...knows-what ($5). Some version of Banh Khot? Anyone?

Chargrilled glutinous rice encasing a whole sweetly caramelised banana (Chuoi Nep Nuong) was $2.50 a pop. A new encounter for us and quite a delicious chew drizzled with coconut milk.

Sampled another novel sweet treat, light and crispy rice crackers spiced with fennel seeds(?). Two dinner-plate sized crackers sandwiched loads of malted toffee syrup and slivered flesh of fresh coconut ($5). A gooey crunchy oily sticky sweet and savoury party in your mouth! Extra fun to be had watching wisps of toffee float away into hair of unwary passers-by.

Yet more deepfried temptation in the guise of battered banana fritters ($2 each). Even so, alas by this stage we'd reached deepfried and barbequed saturation and did not try them.

But a large cup of freshly squeezed green sugarcane juice ($5) was very welcomed relief, the extreme sweetness cut with a squeeze of citrussy cumquat.

Late afternoon, but hungry hoards continued to descend on Hopkins Street to enjoy the atmosphere, food, free concerts and a rare fabulously clear Melbourne day.

The celebrations were to continue to 10 pm culminating in a fireworks display but the heat and gluttony proved too much, much earlier, for even the superheroes among us. Overtaxed super senses defeated Spidey, another ice-cold sugarcane juice perhaps? Overall impressions from our inaugural visit though, one of the better street festivals around town to see in the Lunar New Year and a terrific opportunity to sample examples of Vietnamese streetfoods without leaving the country. We'll try to make it again next year.

Celebrating the Lunar New Year or Tet is the festival highlight of the year for Melbourne's large Vietnamese community spread around several suburbs and surrounds. Check out more Tet festivities that were held at Richmond's Victoria Street at Off the Spork, through the captivating camera lens of Agnes, fellow Melbourne based blogger and fried food aficionado.