The pho was good. The broth was beefy and the noodle was brothy. Every twirl you manage to pick up with the pair of disposable bamboo chopsticks was worth inhaling a deep breath for the flavor to soak your taste buds and dally with your turbinate. The tripe and the sweet onion rings texture-wise taste about the same to me (see, tripe tastes just fine!), which is good, since I’m soft-tongued and those little zings of spiciness can easily bring me to tears. Tendon and Flank were, frankly, tender, but still a good change of texture from the lean brisket consistency and the rice noodle naivete.
Rosie’s Pho does not serve just pho. It serves a whollota things. Mudpie once amusedly predicted that one day its menu will include pizza and hamburgers. But no, it has stopped expanding, at a menu large enough that I had to carouse over for 5 minutes to find my order amidst various noodle and rice dishes. But my dad didn’t take that long, and he didn’t even have glasses on. So here’s his order:
Grilled beef chunk steak served over rice. Don’t you just love the colorful display? I have no idea what the sauce to the side was, he didn’t have it with his rice, and I was busy snouting in my soup, so I didn’t remember to chopstick a taste, until now. My take is soy sauce with ground peanuts, but please let me know if you have a guess at what it is.
Another shot close up. I just really like the colours, the flowery arrangement, the inviting variety. We see fresh cucumber, tomato, lettuce, onion; we see stir fried bell pepper, more onion; and we see grilled marinated beef, and very little rice. The Vietnamese dishes here are so Americanized that meat overpowers everything. Anyway, dad said he remembered the beef here used to be more tender. Maybe the chef was a little occupied with my humongous USS Pho, and chunky beef got overcharred. Sorry for the hype over the colours.
But we have desserts to make up for it. 🙂
I know, that is not the most dazzling presentation. We had to ask for to-gos, because we sat there too long to let the dust food settle before ordering dessert, and ended up running out of time. In the plastic cup is green tea ice cream, which tastes extremely like banyan pandan leaf (lá dứa) to me. My favorite. I can come here just for this ice cream. Avocado bubble tea and chocolate Capuccino bubble tea were pleasant endings as well. What else can you expect?
Lunch for three with desserts costs a total of $36, tip and tax included. (I kinda miss dining in Vietnam, no tip and tax there.) And we were rolling out filled to the brim.
Address: Rosie’s Phở – Asian noodle soup
2001 Texas Ave S #300
College Station, TX 77840
(979) 680-8580
Leave a Reply