Hello friends! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a nice bowl of hot comforting pho in my belly. Okay, that’s a lie, I had some last week at Mr. Red Cafe but I can’t help but want some when it’s rainy outside! Grayson and I stumbled upon Ha cafe on our visit to Hou Cai Lei so we decided to try it out. Ha cafe offers a variety of Vietnamese noodle dishes and is located in a plaza on Willingdon and Kingsway.
House pho
Grayson got the house pho because it has a bit of everything. Perfect for all the indecisives out there. This one cake with rare beef, tripe, flank, and beef balls. He said that the meat was tender which was good and there was a generous amount of meat in the bowl. He also mentioned that the broth didn’t seem to have msg in it which is another big plus. Hurray for pho broth that actually tastes like bone broth!
Hot and sour pho
I went with this one because I like trying out new types of pho. What I liked about this was that you get to choose which kind of protein you would like in it. You can choose beef, chicken or seafood. I went with the chicken because I wasn’t a fan of the seafood patties the seafood one cake with.
We were both super surprised when this came to the table because all they brought to us was a bowl of rice noodles. We were so confused and amused at the same time. We had a good laugh about it but apparently they serve the noodle and the soup separately.
Now onto the soup, the soup had a very distinct sour taste. I think it was from lemon and tamarind because it was a flavor I never tasted before. It also had tomatoes in it which added to the sourness of the soup. The soup also had been sprouts, cabbage, bell peppers, lots of basil, Thai chili, and chicken breast. I like my chicken breast but this was very tough and clearly over cooked from boiling in the broth. I wasn’t a fan of this but the soup was so addicting that it was easily to look past it. Grayson agreed that the soup was unique and delicious tasting so he kept asking for some!
