Salad days: Sông Quê Café is our top pick on Kingsland Road’s “Pho Mile”
(Picture: Press handout)Chinese New Year may get the majority of the limelight, but this weekend also marks the Vietnamese New Year, or Têt. The name is short for Têt Nguyên Äán, which translates as “festival of the first day” and this year falls on Sunday January 22.
The one-hour time difference between Vietnam and China means the new moon of the Lunar New Year first occurs on different days and, instead of the Year of the Rabbit, this year the Vietnamese will be celebrating the Year of the Cat over a five-day public holiday. Otherwise, the two festivals have much in common, a celebration of family, food and welcoming in good luck for the coming 12 months.
London’s Vietnamese restaurants have historically been found on the strip of Kingsland Road between Shoreditch and Dalston known as “Pho Mile” after the emblematic dish of Vietnam, a broth of rice noodles, herbs and, traditionally, beef or chicken. The choice of places to eat can be overwhelming, but Mien Tay, Tây Äô and Viet Grill repay exploration, as well as the all-time classic of Sông Quê, which we’ve listed below.
Deptford, too, has a fine concentration of Vietnamese restaurants; try Café Mama Pho and Viet Anh Pho if you can’t get into our recommendation below of Eat Vietnam. Oddly, there are slim pickings in the West End of London, though Banh Mi Bay (Fitzrovia and Holborn) and Covent Garden’s Hoa Sen are good names to know, as well as the Soho outpost of Old Street’s Cây Tre.
So from pho and summer rolls to zingy salads and no end of noodles, here are five of the best London restaurants to celebrate Têt.
Sông Quê Café
If you only eat in one restaurant on Kingsland Road’s “Pho Mile”, make it Sông Quê. A corner site with large windows on both sides, the canteen-style dining room is flooded with light at lunchtime while the car headlights streaming past in the dark give nighttimes the edgy urban grit conspicuously lacking from the charmingly friendly staff. Crisp salt-and-pepper squid scattered with fresh chilli followed by a noodle bowl featuring vermicelli laced with grilled and shredded pork and topped with pork spring rolls is a deeply satisfying two-courser we find ourselves ordering again and again; in the unlikely event that meal fatigue ever sets in, there are sugarcane prawn sticks, chargrilled quail and whole sea bream with mango and fish sauce to tempt. Drink homemade lemonade by day, Vietnamese beer in the evening.
134 Kingsland Road, E2 8DY, songque.co
Cây Tre
A slick-looking Vietnamese overseen by smartly dressed staff on one of Soho’s main restaurant drags might not raise hopes of the authenticity of the experience within but it pays to know the backstory of Cây Tre: not only did it begin life as a functional café on Old Street (still there) but the owners are also behind Kingsland Road classic Viet Grill. The West End location makes it a no-brainer for anyone new to Vietnamese food — pork spring rolls, aubergine with peanuts, prawn and chicken rice crêpes — though old-handers are likely to be just as impressed by claypot catfish and a terrific rendition of shaking beef, tingling with capsicum and Phu Quoc black pepper. Stools at the front are great for a solo bowl of pho before meeting a mate or comfort after a bad date. Don’t want something so restauranty? Cây Tre’s even-more casual spin-off Kêu serves bánh mì on nearby Poland Street.
42-43 Dean Street, W1D 4PZ, caytrerestaurant.co.uk
Green Papaya
A long-standing resident of E8 before Hackney became a des-res for ambitious chefs, Green Papaya has been a trailblazer for Vietnamese food since the turn of the century. It ticks all the boxes: family run, simply furnished and with a clientele of east Asian students, east London hipsters and East End locals who’ve been coming since the place opened in 2000. The short menu makes ordering easy: “nibbles” of minced beef and pork wrapped in betel leaf, faultlessly crunchy soft-shell crab and, of course, green papaya salad followed by larger plates of grilled belly pork, stir-fried tofu or baked seabass fillets. Want more spice? Elsewhere on the menu are dishes from Xi’an, the capital of China’s Shaanxi province, such as pork buns like mini burgers and grilled spicy lamb with cumin.
191 Mare Street, E8 3QE, 020 8985 5486
Bánh Bánh
Vietnam has some of the finest street food in the world so it’s only fitting that this pair of restaurants — the Peckham original and its Brixton follow-up — began life as a street-food outfit in east London before heading south. The five young siblings behind Bánh Bánh follow the recipes of their grandmother, who worked as a chef in Saigon in the Forties and, judging by the photos on the restaurant’s website, was something of a style icon. Modern interiors owe more to the current generation than granny and, while all the classics are present and correct on the menu, don’t miss the signature banh khot pancakes involving prawns cloaked in just-set egg topped with spring onion and served in a cast-iron pan; give it a minute or two if you prefer your eggs on the firmer side. Dining solo? Bánh Bánh’s pho, a beef bone broth thick with ropes of flat rice noodles and topped with beef brisket or shredded chicken, is the perfect one-dish meal.
46 Peckham Rye, SE15 4JR and 326 Coldharbour Lane, SW9 8QH, banhbanh.com
Eat Vietnam
Reckoned by many SE8 locals to be the best of Deptford’s impressive collection of Vietnamese restaurants, Eat Vietnam is also the best-looking, with carved wooden chairs and a mural of the Mekong river. The attention to detail and cooking skill would shame many restaurants that are twice the price: lamb comes as a marinated Barnsley chop girdled by a crisped-up layer of caramelised fat, while the skin of a perfectly timed fried sea bream glints like silver foil, the tender flesh beneath falling away with the gentlest prod of a chopstick. Elsewhere are chicken wings in the sort of house glaze one imagines is a jealously guarded family secret, summer rolls zinging with freshness whatever the season and coconut pancakes containing a fleshy tiger-prawn. Excellent veggie and vegan options, too.
234 Evelyn Street, SE8 5BZ, eat-vietnam.co.uk
