Pho Express: Strong, New Banh Mi Offering In Angel

Taking in the Angel's Sunday scene, as well as its banh mi.

Name Pho Express 
Address 149 Upper Street, Unit B, London N1 1RA 
Phone none 
Web site none
Main dish price range £4-5
Rating 3.5 Stars.  Definitely go if you're in the neighborhood.  
Recommended dishes:  Banh Mi with either BBQ pork or shredded chicken


Please note: This review has since been updated.  Check out our latest musings on Pho Express here. 


My husband, Nick,  is definitely one picky person when it comes to banh mi, the Vietnamese sandwiches on toasted French bread that sparked a NYC mini-craze a couple years ago.  A native of Oakland, Nick remembers eating the warm sandwiches when he was still in high school, popping out of work with a Vietnamese co-worker to go buy them on International Avenue. So, to say the least, when we first moved to this country we were both been pretty disappointed with the incarnations of our favorite Vietnamese treat on offer in London.  The Banh Mi Bay restaurant near Holborn, while definitely cutesy and British looking, wasn't spicy enough for our taste-- and like a lot of Brit sandwiches, went a bit too heavy on the spread (in this case, pâté). The places setting up shop in Broadway Market definitely nailed the iced, Vietnamese coffee, but the their bread didn't have the toasty, flaky texture that makes banh mi such a study in the joy of opposites-- ie: moist, wet veggies on hot, heavily-toasted, crunchy bread. 

The new owner  is always ready with recommendations at Pho Express.

So we were clearly only cautiously optimistic when we learned that a banh mi place down the street from our house was getting taken over by a pair of Vietnamese cooks with family ties to the Que Viet restaurant on Kingsland Road in Hoxton. The banh mi place, a tiny, take-away sandwich counter with three seats inside-- and only a few tables on the sidewalk out front-- quickly changed its name from Ca Phe to Pho Express. The owners also went on a major charm offensive, smilingly engaging with customers, lengthening their hours late into the night (new, late-night tipsy food, people!), and often describing to anyone who would listen how their goal was to bring authentic bahn mi and pho to the neighborhood. They even tacked a map of Vietnam up to the wall inside for good measure.


And the good news is they've definitely improved substantially on East London's banh mi options.  The shop's four banh mi sandwiches-- Classic, BBQ Pork, Garlic Beef, and Shredded Chicken (all £4)-- all now boast heftier portions of fresh, hot meat, served on nearly perfect, toasted French baguettes.  Instead of just relying on Sriracha sauce to give a spicy kick-- as good as that is-- fresh chilis are now also available, along with a whole host of fresh vegetables marinating behind the counter. Blissfully, they're also still serving Ca Phe's divine Vietnamese iced coffee (£2.50), which adds the ideal, sweet milky coating to your mouth to give you at least some feeling of immunity when you start piling on the chilis. 


For now, we're leaving the restaurant in the three-star range, simply because the menu still appears to be constantly evolving-- with occasionally mixed results.  On one recent visit, for instance, they dusted our sandwich with fried pieces of onion, which was good, but somehow didn't entirely work to improve the overall flavor combination. We also haven't yet tried the two flavors of pho that the restaurant-- true to its name-- now sells for £5 (available in shrimp or beef flavors). The owner told us when asked that he gets up at 5 am every morning to go and cook up the fresh pho stock at the kitchen at Que Viet-- a perfect encapsulation of how hard he appears to be working to make this place a London-wide standout. As the weather gets colder, you can bet we'll be back to give a try.  Stay tuned, eaters!

La Sacre Coeur, Islington

Name: La Sacre Coeur

Address: 18 Theberton St., London, N1 0QX
Phone: 020 7354 2618
Website: http://lesacrecoeur.net/index.html
Main dish price range: £9-12
Rating: 1/2 Star. If you are starving and everywhere else is booked, I guess you could go here.

I think this blog is maybe supposed to be about restaurants we recommend and I'm not sure French qualifies as "ethnic," but my experience here this Saturday night was kind of funny, so I'm going to break the rules.

This restaurant is off Upper Street just past Islington Green, where Essex Road splits off. It's on a quieter corner, away from the madness and chain restaurants on Upper Street, and probably has nice outdoor tables in the summer.

I met my friends A. and C., plus their guests, for dinner at 9pm. We were a larger party at 7, and it took a while to be seated. Meanwhile, we wondered at the chairs hanging from the ceiling and walls, and the generally tacky decor. I wasn't put off by this -- my favorite French restaurant in Brooklyn, Provence en Boite on Smith Street, has really ugly decor. For months I refused to go in, primarily because of the lace curtains, but also the yellow walls, the floral cushions, and the tacky posters. Instead I would go to Robin de Bois with its funky taxidermy and outdoor garden, or the neighborhood French favorite Bar Tabac with its wooden tables, art deco posters, and foosball table. But then my mother went to Provence en Boite one morning when she was visitng but before I was awake (so, before 10), and raved about it. And when I finally went I had to concede that the food was far superior to the other French places in the neighborhood. Ever since, I have theorized that perhaps ugly decor correlates to real French cooking, at least at a neighborhood bistro.

The people at La Sacre Coeur did seem to be authentically French. They also had, even for London, an extremely strange service style: A.'s boyfriend asked about which dishes the server would recommend, and the server described one dish as "fucking great." I don't think I've ever had a server use a swear word to me before, but it's an interesting technique. The female servers, on the other hand, weren't so bold, seeming to hang back just out of our lines of sight very awkwardly, so that the last person who'd ordered was obligated to alert the person next to them that it was their turn so that we could get on with it.

I'm not sure if what A.'s boyfriend ordered was fucking great. My beef stew, which was inextricably not Bourguignon (why?) was good, but the "mashed potatoes" were definitely from a mix, an anomaly in a country so fond of mash. The creme brulee was crispy on the top but freezing even right underneath. The portions were almost American sized, so I couldn't even make my grandmother's favorite restaurant comment: Such terrible food, and in such small portions.

The food wasn't awful and the company was great, so it wasn't a complete loss, but unless nothing else was available, I think I'll look elsewhere for my next French meal.