Hotpot head

>> Pho Lam challenges you
to take on the mother of all phos

by MATHILDE RABBAT

What could be better than a totally affordable quality dinner under the stars, a stone’s throw away from the burgeoning mountain, on the first warm evening in spring? Vietnamese resto Pho Lam, a new addition to the eateries with terrasses on Parc Avenue’s sunny side, steps up to the plate with a bunch of soup selections and a hotpot that’ll knock your socks off.

Chinese influences, detectable on the menu, reveal that this is decidedly a northern Vietnamese establishment. You are thus presented with nine different Tonkinese soup selections, or pho (traditional Vietnamese noodle soup dishes), incorporating beef (raw and cooked), chicken or veggies, all similarly priced between $6 and $7.50, depending on what size you fancy. There are also oodles and oodles of noodles to choose from, prepared with the aforementioned ingredients, plus pork and shrimp, many served with steamed rice and salad.

I was supposed to have one of those along with a pho, but a fortunate mix-up in the kitchen resulted in what can best be described as a Vietnamese hotpot fondue ($27) being delivered to my table instead. You haven’t seen a hotpot till you’ve laid eyes on this beast, which even comes with its own fire-breathing, butane-powered burner—the mother of all phos, if you will. Prelims, such as prepping the broth, and cleaning and chopping ingredients, take place in the kitchen, but the rest is a strictly do-it-yourself enterprise: you control what and how much you put in your pot, and how hot and how long it is cooked.

The cauldron may only sport two compartments, but this monster portion would easily satisfy a third dining companion as well. It’s jam-packed with seafood, everything from shrimp and golden shrimp balls to crab and calamari, and lots of veggies, namely carrot, celery, Chinese cabbage, fennel, green onion, cilantro and Vietnamese vegetable wafers (that looked like a bunch of Sponge Bobs floating around in the bowl). As if that wasn’t enough, the whole thing comes accompanied with two beds of white and whole-wheat sticky vermicelli. The latter surpassed the former, which harboured a somewhat unusual aftertaste, in my view.

Tasty, thin, raw strips of beef are also there for the dunking, along with a few lime wedges, some red chili peppers and the saltiest soy sauce I’ve ever tasted. The broth definitely tastes its best when all ingredients have been permitted to stew in it for a while. That’s when you find out which ingredients are floaters and which simply never learnt how to swim. Some, like the shrimp, simultaneously belong to both categories, depending on how (un)cooked they are.

There’s definitely a measure of skill involved in consuming this type of meal. First of all, ignore everything your mother ever taught you about not playing with your food at the table. This joint encourages you to dunk a variety of eatables into a piping cauldron, poke at them with your chopsticks and fish them out again when it suits you. Then, make sure you have control of the amount of heat you introduce under the pot so as to conserve the al dente factor, especially when it comes to the veggies. Few people over the age of three and under the age of 80 like those mushy. Next, keep an eye on that seafood, lest it gets too rubbery. Once the broth begins to boil, you can visibly track the shift of ingredients from raw to cooked. Watch the calamari and the beef, they’re ready faster than Robin Williams can wail “Good morning, Vietnaaaam!”

One of the best ways to gauge the worth or quality of a meal is to pose the simple question “Would I ever have it again?” In this case, the reply would be a resounding “You bet your chopsticks, I would!” I am now a hotpot head. With the first attempt snuggly tucked under my belt, I’m already aching for my second fix.