Pho Thuy Tay review – step out of your Vietnamese comfort zone in Surrey Quays

The best things to eat are all there in black and white 

For any foreign cuisine to become popular in the UK, it unfortunately has to be distillable into a handful of stereotyped dishes that are easy enough to understand for the mouthbreathers among us to understand. Whether or not those stereotypes are actually indicative or representative of said cuisine is largely irrelevant to its chances of popularity, especially with the mouthbreathers.

With Vietnamese food, it’s safe to say that its flagbearers are pho and summer rolls. While both have the benefit of actually being Vietnamese dishes, it’s well worth venturing beyond them when presented with the opportunity of doing so. At Pho Thay Tay, there are multiple opportunities to do so, both on the regular a la carte menu and on the pair of chalkboards that make up the specials menu. And yet, across my many visits, it appeared that my table was the only one to dive into its joys.

A la carte at Pho Thuy Tay

Under no circumstances should you bother with the ‘stir fry pho’. This soupless variant of the classic dish had probably been created to avoid spillage in takeaway bags and moped carriers. The result was an unappetisingly bland melange of excessively greasy noodles and dull, leaden slices of beef.

The actual pho, on the other hand, shows just how deceptively simply yet seamlessly complex this noodle soup can be. The initial fragrant hit of the soup (which is typically made from a Noah’s ark of ingredients) gave way to a subtle yet consistent moreishness with a clean aftertaste. The rice noodles were suitably smooth, narrow and modestly thick. The one partial letdown was the beef itself – thinly sliced, but scanty in number and size.

Bun bo hue gets far less attention than pho and is arguably even harder to do right. The bright red soup tasted predominantly of lemongrass, its astringent zestiness paired with a moderate spicy heat that built up to a cumulative lip tingling finish. Although there was no pig trotter, there were wafer thin slices of beef, some of which were rimmed with fat or connective tissue. The half-sized slice of pork loaf was lonely and could’ve done with more porcine compatriots. Rice noodles were thin and narrow with rounded edges. Overall, a highly respectable version of bun bo hue.

The banh cuon is one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes and remains somewhat difficult to find in the UK. When the kitchen at Pho Thuy Tay is on form, the banh cuon were toe-curlingly delicious. The folded sheets of rice flour noodle sheets can be supple and slippery thin, their moreishness enhanced by the fish sauce-based dipping sauce. The kitchen seems to have issues with consistency though, with the noodle sheets sometimes suffering from an unappetising dry thickness (relatively speaking).

I’m not convinced any of the optional toppings are worth bothering with. The wrinkliness of the chopped fungus and the crunch of the caramelised onions were textural distractions. While the sausage slices weren’t bad in of themselves, with plenty of dense firmness to their name, I prefer the milky smooth lightness of more old school chả lụa pork roll.

Summer rolls, bulbous with grilled pork, had an almost HR Giger-like aesthetic to them. I usually find summer rolls – one of the gateway dishes to Vietnamese food for gastronomically meek Westerners – to be rather uninteresting. But the fatty charred meatiness of the pork, the occasional burst of Thai basil and the sticky tackiness of the rice flour skins made this version far more memorable and enjoyable than most.

In hindsight, I should’ve ordered the banh xeo filled with the same pork as the summer rolls, rather than the beef that I actually opted for. The limp strips of grey beef and copious amounts of bean sprout filler were unworthy companions for the effortlessly thin and crispy rice paper crepe that they came in. Still, when paired with the fish sauce-based dipping sauce, the carb element alone was enough for enjoyable scoffing.

Squidgy, fleshy aubergine contrasted neatly with crisp, airy deep-fried tofu in a winsome stew. The pair were bound together by a sticky, lightly moreish broth.

An alternate version had snails instead of aubergine, the firmness and chewiness of the land molluscs working just as well. This version also had sliced green banana, which I almost mistook for aubergine or tenderised peppers.

Chilli lemongrass goat didn’t have much of either chilli or lemongrass, with the goat itself tasting more like beef from a cow desperately tired of life itself. Thanks, but no thanks.

A la carte banh mi at Pho Thuy Tay

All of the banh mi I tried at Pho Thuy Tay benefitted from crisp, light and airy bread. The version filled with pork was served warm, the neatly caramelised and smoky meat balanced out by crisp salad dotted with the occasional hit of chilli.

The beef banh mi wasn’t a sandwich, but a stew with the warm bread on the side. Don’t count it out on that account though. The modestly thick and sticky broth was a multi-faceted joy. It not only thrummed with a strident umami, but also had undertones of coriander and lemongrass, evident whether slurped directly or scooped using the crisp and fluffy carb slices. Meanwhile, the unctuousness of the squidgy beef was emphasised by the seams of connective tissue. Bovine-bread pairings rarely get better than this.

The vegetarian banh mi filled with tofu and vegetables was an uninspired affair. The tart pickled veg was dotted with hints of ginger and spring onion, but there wasn’t nearly enough of either. The bulk of the filling instead consisted of rather bitty and bready tofu, an unflattering treatment which felt like a throwback to 1980s vegetarian cooking.

Specials at Pho Thuy Tay

Despite not being available as a topping for the banh cuon, pork roll is occasionally available as a deep-fried special. The evenly crispy and grease-free exterior was the perfect envelope for the delicately light meatiness inside.

Tofu had been deep fried to the same high standard as the pork roll, resulting in an interior that was delicately airy and milky. Each bean curd cube was a fine delivery mechanism for the potently funky shrimp paste. Although one might automatically think of agedashi tofu upon reading about this dish, the overall effect of the batter was less like that Japanense staple and more like a cross between panko and scraps.

Although the same high-quality deep frying was evident in the batter coating the monkfish, the fish itself was disappointingly dry and bitty.

Deep-fried eel came off as stodgy with an effect oddly akin to that of whitebait. The stir-fried glass noodles weren’t anything to write home about either.

While there was inevitably a degree of variation in the quality of the mantis shrimp, the size of that degree was surprising. It could range from unusually dull and bland on one occasion to hearty and salty on another. Pho Thuy Tay’s usual gift with battering and deep frying wasn’t enough to make up for the unmemorable iteration, highlighting the limits of what they can paper over.

Although the clams were small, they were texturally pleasing with their chewness and muscularity. They came swimming in a sweet, sticky and tangy sauce which was fine, as long you’re in the mood for that sort of thing. The clams’ own brininess occasionally shone through the relatively heavy sauce, making me wonder if a more light-touch preparation would’ve been more effective.

Grilled squid patties were unsurprisingly similar to oden. The golden coating had a dense meaty bounce to it, with each ‘patty’ soaking up the fish sauce-base dipping condiment well.

Every one of the salt roasted chicken feet were perfectly and evenly crisp, although the heart-stopping amounts of salt spilled everywhere, no matter how well manoeuvred your table manners. Although chicken feet are generally valued in Chinese cuisines for the ‘grapple’ factor of stripping skin from bone with your teeth, that consideration wasn’t really a factor here. Think of this dish more as ‘fried’ chicken a la nose-to-tail, before nose-to-tail became fashionable.

I had high hopes for the salt-marinated chicken following the crunchy chicken claws. But the sliced breast and thigh meat, while unmistakably and mouth-puckeringly salty, was just slightly too tough, almost to the point of being cartilaginous. While I certainly don’t demand that all chicken be tender and/or crispy (unlike a MBE-holder of a certain age), this chicken was ultimately unenjoyable. At least the small-grained white rice was fluffy and there was some refreshingly tart and crisp pickled veg to offset the saltiness of the chicken.

Congee can be a divisive dish among some Westerners, doubly so if you add in offal. Happy Buddha was broadly happy with the congee, but less so with the offal. For me, it was the other way around. I found little comfort in the bitty rice gruel, but much joy in the firm, springy intestines and even more so in the grainy, earthy boudin.

If you’d rather have the offal without the congee then you’re usually in luck at Pho Thuy Tay as steamed intestines are the closest thing to a permanent fixture that the specials board has.

The selection of offal included not only rumen and omasum tripe, but also kidneys, liver, boudin, black pudding and possibly ear. The tripe and organs were firm, dense and springy, while the liver was grainy. The black pudding and boudin almost took the crown from the tripes as my favoured meaty treat here: light and loosely packed, yet unexpectedly delicate in their meatiness. All were fine conveyors for the shrimp paste served on the side for dipping. Its pungent funk and astringent sourness was easily strong enough to stiffen spines and awaken the dead.

Intestines are sometimes available stir-fried with citrusy, bittersweet greens. Despite the multifaceted nature of the vegetables and the grease-free quality of the stir frying, this treatment was still arguably not as winsome as the steamed version.

The gnomically ambiguous ‘braised meat’ turned out to be chopped pork rib and belly meat, some of which was served on the bone. Dense and fatty with connective tissue in places, the pork also had a meaty moreishness. The small grains of sticky rice had not only clumped together, but had a gentle chewiness too. Despite the small portion of pickled daikon and carrot, their refreshing tartness was still potent enough to act as a counterweight to the relative richness of the meat.

Quail eggs, hard boiled to within an inch of their short never-hatched lives, would’ve been unremarkable but for the deep-frying. Slightly crisp and mostly chewy, the carby coating was charming in a way that its ovarian filling was not. The sweetness (and very transient morishness) of the sticky sauce was thankfully offset by the sharpness of julienned ginger. As usual, the kitchen’s skill at deep frying is evidence. It’s just a shame that, in this case at least, its stablemates weren’t quite at the same level.

Crab and sausage noodle soup wasn’t quite what I expected, in more ways than one. The lightly umami soup was almost like a bisque, except with the mellow citrusy elements of lemongrass, but none of the sharp astringency, as well as a clean aftertaste. Light yet hearty noodles, possibly made from buckwheat, were thin and of medium width.

The kitchen had cheaped out on both of the proteins, but thankfully not to a degree where either was unenjoyable. No white crab meat was present, but the blobs of brown head meat did have some funky saltiness to their name. The sausage turned out to be two halves of sliced sausage patty, but its airiness meant it was more like oden than a McMuffin filling. A quietly pleasing and well-rounded bowl of noodle soup.

A noodle soup served with mantis shrimp looked somewhat similar to the crab and sausage version above, but was a subtly different kettle of fish. The soup wasn’t Pho Thuy Tay’s best effort, with only a transient sourness and umami to its name. Swimming amongst the vermicelli were heaps of crab head meat, milky pork roll and squidgy tofu. The best toppings had to be the surprisingly hearty mantis shrimp and the thin slices of tender, moreish beef. With a bit of reformulating when it comes to the soup, this special could become one of the better specials at Pho Thuy Tay.

’BBQ’ spare ribs were far, far better than I expected. Tender meat, sticky with a sweet yet umami marinade, separated easily from the bone. Thankfully, that sweetness never became too sickly. The salad was nothing to write home about, but the onions and coriander did provide a refreshing counterpoint to the relative richness of the rib meat.

Desserts at Pho Thuy Tay

The coconut milk pudding can, on occasion, come with too much filler ice. Which, depending on the weather, is either a feature or a bug. But even all that crunchy ice couldn’t disguise the creaminess and delicate sweetness of the thick, smooth lobes of doufuhua-like pudding. Crunchy strings of dessicated coconut and flakes of roasted coconut provided textural contrast.

From its name, ’purple rice yoghurt’ is a dessert ‘odd’ enough to turn many seemingly open-minded cosmopolitan Londoners turn into reactionary, blacktop-reading Little Englanders. The reality isn’t that far removed from a multipot Muller mashup: sweet clumps of sticky rice paired with creamy lobes of soy-based yoghurt. The colouring is probably meant to evoke ube – if only it tasted as such. While not as well-rounded as the coconut milk pudding, it’s still a perfectly cromulent dessert.

Although the durian ice cream had one too many ice crystals, and the portion size was a bit skimpy, it tasted true to the fruit.

The Verdict

One of the reasons that my reviews tend to be as comprehensive and detailed as possible is that some readers want to know exactly what they can expect when they sit down to eat. So recommending a restaurant on the strength of its specials board seems antithetical to that purpose and desire. Specials boards are, by their nature, at least somewhat unpredictable. But sometimes a good meal comes from taking a chance, rather than planning everything down to the last plate. It’s well worth taking a chance on Pho Thuy Tay and its specials board.

What to order: Bun bo hue; pho; probably the banh cuon; offal; almost anything from the specials board

What to skip: The stir-fried pho; lemongrass and chilli goat

Name: Pho Thuy Tay

Address: 1B Rotherhithe Old Road, London, SE16 2PP

Phone: 07788 102988

Web: https://www.phothuytay.co.uk/

Opening Hours: 11.30-22.00, excluding Mondays and Wednesdays. 

Reservations? Probably a good idea for large groups.

Average cost for one person, including soft drinks, when shared between five: £30-35 approx. (£50-65 approx. if you push the boat out)

Rating: ★★★★☆