Pho Express: A Fabulous Vietnamese Spot Strikes Back

Name Pho Express 
Address 149 Upper Street, Unit B, London N1 1RA 
Phone none 
Web site none
Main dish price range £4.5
Rating 4 Stars.  The best place we know to nurse a pho addiction.  
Recommended dishes: 

Someone's studying up on one of London's best banh mi places.

When we last checked in with Pho Express, this tiny, Islington outpost serving Vietnamese food and crispy banh mi was still finding its footing, experimenting with some new ingredients and tweaking the menu and sandwich seasonings with every visit.  Now, several months in, we feel the need to give our loyal and faithful readers an update.  Why?  This place has gone from being good to simply amazing.

One of the first things I feel the need to address is the actual pho itself, which last time, as you may all remember, Nick and I had yet to try. Now, it's worth noting that I have always not been the world's biggest pho fan. I'm never sure what to do when I get the varietals that have hoisin sauce and radishes in little containers on the side, and I've worried in the past that I've taken versions of the soup and either overly seasoned it or kept it so simple I was missing some of the key allure. So it's much to my relief that at Pho Express, the four types of pho on hand (£5-6 each) are made entirely by you for the staff-- and are unlike any I've had before with their amazingly delicate flavorings and quality ingredients. Here, the broth is a light, beef broth, loaded high with large pieces of meat (your choice of chicken, beef, prawn or chicken plus beef), tons of fresh cilantro, and bits of lime that give it a refreshing citrus finish.

Pho shizzle: The amazing beef pho (Pho Bo) at Pho Express. 

Adding to the giant bowl of goodness the staff will readily add fresh, green chilies-- a favorite of Nick's, but perhaps not recommended for the less tough among us. A thick glob of egg noodles sop up the broth inside. Not only have I come to appreciate this pho, I crave it-- and eat it-- on a multi-times a week basis. The staff tells me it's North Vietnamese, different from the kind you'd typically find restaurants. Whatever it is, it's delicious.

Pho fan, pho-ever. 

And the banh mi served these days is now an almost equally palette-pleasing treat. As I mentioned last time around, the best banh mi is a study in opposites-- the crispy, flaky toasted bun and the well-sauced filling and pate inside balancing it out with warm, gooey goodness. The team at Pho Express has always nailed the baguette, offering up the perfectly crisp type of bread product you'd expect to find at a French corner shop. After experimenting with different dry herbs and flakes, however, the team seems to have decided to stick with the more classic iterations of the dish that they do best. My favorite is the barbecue pork (£4), which has cucumbers and sweet, pickled kohlrabi and carrots on top, along with fresh green chilies, which must be asked for as an extra topping. The Special banh mi (£5) is also the perfect balance of tastes and textures with its thick pieces of barbecue pork, homemade pate, and dried pork floss. They even have a Thap Cam banh mi (the most expensive banh mi at £5.5), which is billed as an "all in one option"-- presumably with grilled chicken and pork as well as pate and floss. I've been so hung up on my current favorites, I haven't yet ventured to try it.

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Taking in the local Angel scene, and the yummy banh mi.

Pho Express is certainly rapidly turning into a neighborhood star here in Islington, and certainly my favorite go-to lunch place.  In addition to the sandwiches and pho, the little spot also serves up Vietnamese rice bowls, including a Belly Pork and Spare Ribs in Caramel Sauce (£6). It's still short on seating space though-- besides a couple seats right in the window, they have a very low table with two seats sort of crammed haphazardly in front of the ordering counter, as well as a few seats outside-- relevant if spring would ever grace us with her presence. For now, I'm happy to slurp my soup and wash it down with a pitch-perfect, super sweet Vietnamese Iced Coffee (£2.50).  A nice bit of perfection.   

Believe the hype.

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!

Cay Tre Soho: Fancy Vietnamese with a Heavy Helping of Delish

The fashionable dining space at Cay Tre Soho.

Name Cay Tre Soho
Address 42-43 Dean Street, London W1D 4QD
Phone 020 73179118
Web site http://www.caytresoho.co.uk/
Main dish price range £8-11
Rating 3.5 Stars.  Not the most authentic spot, but a great place to impress a picky date! 
Recommended dishes La Vong Fish, Slow-Cooked Mekong Catfish

Here at the blog we've recently been on a bit of a Vietnamese kick, inspired by the yummy Banh Mi place that recently opened down the street from our apartment (post forthcoming).  So we decided to finally try Cay Tre Soho, a French-influenced Vietnamese place recommended highly by a Vietnamese friend here in London on a recent Friday evening. 

The restaurant definitely has a different vibe that a lot of places we review here. It's decked out in sleek, white-topped tables, and has a very design-y entrance, with bits of the menu scrawled in white letters across a glass wall. It would be the perfect place to go to impress a date or ease a friend not accustomed to hole-in-the-wall ethnic places into the wild world of ethnic cuisine. (We haven't been, but are told for a more downmarket, authentic option, try Cay Tre's location near Old Street.)

Desert or dinner?  Slow-cooked Mekong catfish.

Despite it's trappings of fanciness though, Cay Tre definitely did not disappoint. Our friend recommended the La Vong Grilled Fish appetizer (£6.50), and it definitely was the perfect way to kick off the evening-- the waitress brought a hot plate right to our table and cooked it in front of us, in a little wok piled high with fresh dill and cuts of monkfish so fresh I imagined they caught the fish out back. Also impressive was the Slow Cooked Mekong Catfish (£9.50), which was cooked in a carmelised fish sauce. As I got tipsier as the evening went on, I kept trying to sop up more and more of its sweet, delicious sauce with my rice, unable to let any bit of that dish go away uneaten.

BBQ with Rice Vermicelli.  Photo courtesy of Flickr.

One thing that's great about Ca Trey-- and good Vietnamese food in general-- is that freshness can be king in a cuisine like this, and one can leave the evening without feeling loaded down with heavy creams and starchy foodstuffs. For food along those lines, we loved the Lemongrass Wok Fried Squid (£10), which was hardly fried at all, but instead a mix of super fresh, high-end vegetables, including some delicious tiny, green heirloom tomatoes. Lemongrass, Chinese celery, green chili, and dill rounded out the dish, which managed to be delicious and somewhat healthy all at once.

The only thing we had at Cay Tre that we wouldn't get again was a dish we got on a subsequent visit-- the BBQ Pork with Rice Vermicelli (£9). This has long been a favorite dish of mine at some Vietnamese restaurants, but here the staff added their own twist, choosing to garnish the tender pork slices with fried spring rolls and bits of daikon. The fried bits took some of the focus off the meat and added a dose of crunchy tastelessness. I will give the kitchen staff credit though for nicely dusting the whole thing with peanuts and fresh chilis.

UPDATE: After vacillating between giving this place 3.5 or 4 stars, we've decided to leave Cay Tre at 3.5. We'd like to note though that the Old Street location has made us feel more positive about the Cay Tre brand. Although the Soho locale has a fancy, precious feel, Nick and I have come to really enjoy the vibe at Old Street, which has the same menu, but a much more diverse clientele. The giant, ridiculous-looking cocktails on offer, however, still cause us to raise our eyebrows. Supposedly they're "Vietnamese inspired" but they don't remind us of Vietnam.