Vietnamese – Authentic Vietnamese Cuisine

Who knew this place was this popular!
We’ve been buying stews, phos and dry «bun» noodles from this little hawker stall for some time. In fact, we drive to Ghim Moh with this place (and a few others) in mind. There are several Vietnamese restaurants around, but we actually think the food at this stall can strongly compete with them.
We get beef phos and buns. Sometimes I eat both in one go. The phở soup is comforting, and the bun is also nice.
Worth a try if you don’t know what to eat at Ghim Moh.

This place was so good. Best phở in Singapore in my opinion. Any idea where she moved with the closure or Ghim Moh for renovation?

Real good phở! May be a bit too salty for my taste, but still very good. And at $ 3.80 for chicken broth phở (minus actual chicken), it’s totally worth it.
I also loved the fact that the menu is rather short, making my decisions a bit easier. I love to have variety, but when your new to eating certain things, it becomes daunting. Just right, only a few items on the menu.
However, getting to this place from where I lived was a pain. If I happen to be nearby I would stop by here if I wanted a phở fix.

Wow. I found this place only because of earlier reviewers. We do our marketing here and must have walked past the stall hundreds of times without noticing there was Vietnamese food here. Discovered it on Unilocal on a Saturday afternoon not knowing what to eat.
Dishes cost between S$ 2.5-S$ 5. It’s certainly the best Vietnamese food at this price point, and definitely better than many well-​known and more expensive «proper restaurants».

Lovely. Full for $ 7. Subtle flavours had spring rolls, cold rolls and phou soup beef. Very nice. Will eat there again for sure. It was also very fast.

It was good, not great. I had Phở and the broth wasn’t as rich I had wanted. Pterwise fine and I will visit this joint again.

If a shop calls itself authentic, then it must really have the good stuff to earn that name. And this Vietnamese hawker stall at Ghim Moh is a good example of cheap, delicious and authentic cuisine.
Honestly, I seldom try Vietnamnese cuisine (the last one being Madam Saigon from Millenia Walk). But after hearing a tip-​off from fellow Unilocalers, there must be something worth checking out.
A Must Try dish is Bun thit nuong ($ 4.50), a colorful medley of soft bee hoon crowned with grilled pork, fried spring rolls, cucumber and pickled carrots, chilli, mint leaf and toasted peanuts. I thought it looked dry but it wasn’t.
Once you tossed everything evenly, every bite is full of sweet and sour juices that is superbly appetizing and refreshing for a hot afternoon. The char siew pork could be more thinly sliced as it was slightly dry and not fully marinated. But that few pieces of pork would not refrain one from enjoying the bowl.
For something hot, go for the Phở Bo– a slurpy piquant bowl of beef rice noodles ($ 4.50). This does not win points for complexity, but its simple ingredients – lean beef meat, mint leaf, corianders and a good beef stock bring out the flavours. Plus, it was not salty and so we emptied the bowl CLEAN.
Mango and Seafood Salad ($ 4.50) might sound and look a lot like the Thai Papaya salad. But no, this packs a much bigger punch and does not require a lot of teeth work to digest the dominantly raw greens as in Thai Salad.
Here, the mango are freshly grated into thin slices, then mixed with carrots and green papaya. The sweet-​sour sauce tasted similar Bun thit nuong but this is so moreish that one goes for more helpings.
We were too full for the Spring Rolls ($ 2.50 for 2pcs), which is made of same components as Bun thit nuong. If you have limited stomach space, it is better to opt for the Bun thit nuong. All the food were prepared by the lady owner is a friendly Vietnamnese, who can speak in Chinese and English.
And every dish was excellent, from the noodles right down to the condiments. The light, non-​greasy carbohydrates did not leave us feeling overstuff or thirsty. With such delicious, authentic and cheap Vietnam cuisine, I hope this stall can stay after Ghim Moh closed for renovation next year.

A friend recommended this place to me when I asked what was good in Ghim Moh market at night.
I ordered the phở, being the most familiar and comforting Vietnamese food to me, and it was one of the better ones I have tried in Singapore. The only disappointment was the lack of hoisin sauce as a dip. My phở experience has been confined to the Canadian standards, so I could be biased. The beef slices were not rare but cooked when I got my bowl. Thankfully they were still pretty tender and not too overdone.
I liked the broth which had the right mix of taste and flavor. A good satisfying homely bowl of beef noodles which could be made even better with a squeeze of lime, some green chili slices and the rooster chili and hoisin sauce mix.
My search continues for a phở which will be similar to those found in North America.

No I-​word for this review, but make no mistake, this review is indeed about the real deal.
It is a singular irony that Singapore being literally a stone’s throw away from Vietnam has no decent Vietnamese food. There is no representation of the vibrant street food culture of Ho Chi Minh or my personal favorite, Hanoi, in Singapore. In fact, there is better Vietnamese in Southern California than in Singapore?! Why not? There is no conceivable reason. Singapore too had a large immigrant population of asylum seekers from Vietnam in the 70s and 80s. Singapore is closer to Vietnam than the United States. Singapore is closer culturally to Vietnam than So Cal (ok, maybe not now, but back then…). Whatever the reasons are, the fact remains that if you are having Vietnamese food in Singapore, you are indubitably ensconced in some hipster lounge bar or standing in line for a hot new dining concept called Viet Viet or other; in short, you will be surrounded by an abundance bull-​sh$$ and served food that can be considered Vietnamese in only the most liberal and loose interpretation of the word. How anybody could conceive of the wrong-​headed idea that Vietnamese cuisine would in any way need or require ANY dressing up, atmospheric or otherwise, in order to be attractive or desirable is beyond all human comprehension. It makes me angry just thinking about it! I am offended for Vietnamese cuisine and ashamed of the way it has been treated in my home. It’s the moral equivalent of condescendingly pointing out to your Vietnamese house guest that there is indoor plumbing in Singapore?! I go friggin’ apoplectic when I see that $%&*.
I was almost deferential when I ordered and respectful when I retrieved my tray of Bún Thit Nuong and Goi cuon, I stopped short of bowing and backing away from the stall; a bit much and creepy. You see, I just wanted the proprietress to know how much I appreciated her simple dishes, how much I adored the unpretentiousness of a hawker stall offering Vietnamese street fare. I wanted her to see how awed I was by the whole experience and how welcomed her stall, her food and her efforts were in Singapore, my home.
I’ve had some of my best Vietnamese meals in strip malls all over the Southland but didn’t realize it till I actually visited Vietnam. In Singapore, I missed biting into awesome crunchy, zesty, herbaceous, savory Bánh mì or burying my face in and slurping steamy basin-​sized bowls of aromatic Phở. So, led by this need, I ventured into one wrong-​headed «vietnamese» venture after another in Singapore, all the while getting more and more angry while hopes of ever having a satisfying Vietnamese bowl of anything in Singapore became ever less likely. So while I took the trouble to followup on fellow Unilocaler, Clarissa L’s tip on Vietnamese, I maintained a healthy skepticism about my prospects for anything approaching a good time.
Dear fellow Unilocaler, that’s just real life isn’t it, that moments of epiphany, of pure bliss, are seldom if ever planned or orchestrated, you just walk right into them. I walked right into a wall of bliss and am still smiling like a fool through broken teeth and a black eye.
The food is everything Clarissa L’s already told you about in her review, and yet so much more and much less. First of all, it’s the colors that catch your attention, the fire engine red chilis, the rich verdant hues of the Thai basil, the bleached white of fresh crunchy sprouts, the glisten of sweet fish sauce on noodles, and the deep brown skins of the small crisply-​fried spring rolls. Your brain quickly floods with the visual information and you take your first mouthful in a daze, in a color-​induced trance. It is also much less, because despite my hyperbole and blissed-​out expressions of wonder, it is an elementally basic dish that I was served. Each ingredient having passed only briefly through human hands to be put together in their pristine forms in a harmonious whole which made you wonder how something this simple could be so good.
Dear Unilocaler friend, I am unequal to the task of trying to describe the flavor to you. Even if I could, I know I shouldn’t. Instinctively, I feel that analyzing the experience to a degree as to enable me to adequately transcribe it into language descriptive enough to be usefully communicative, would be to kill the wonder and the beauty of the experience. I shouldn’t have to tell you about it, you shouldn’t have to read about it on a screen. Indeed, why should you even take my word for it, that it’s good. Because fellow Unilocaler, taking the trouble to be here, to meet Mdm Proprietress in person and to order up Bún Thit Nuong and Goi cuon for yourself, is truly living and saying «No!» to the forces of mediocrity aligned against all that is pure, honest and good. «Screw Mediocrity» should be the mantra of every Singaporean Unilocaler, and that my friends is the essence of being a Singapore foodie and the point of being alive in Singapore.

Yay! I saw this stall featured in the Straits Times awhile back and determined that I must come get my Vietnamese vermicelli (bun) fix at some point. and that lovely point happened to be today! Wheee…
Vietnamese food is often equated with phở, but that is so limiting when there is so much other delicious stuff that they have (read: anything that involves fish sauce, my super favourite!). This stall, run by a 41-​year-​old cook from Ho Chi Minh City, serves up delicious phở and other Vietnamese specialities (beef stew, rice dishes).
Anyway, so to cut to the chase — I ordered bun thit nuong ($ 4.50, no extra charge for take-​away!) which is basically a dish of rice vermicelli noodles (room temperature), mixed up with jullienned carrots/​cucumbers/​radish/​beansprouts/​lettuce/​mint/​basil and seasoned with a dash (or more, according to your taste) of fish sauce, topped with marinated pork and a crunchy spring roll! Oh, and don’t forget a generous sprinkling of peanuts. Delicious :) It has been one of my favourite dishes since trying it in Ho Chi Minh and am very glad to get a good and cheap rendition here! Looove their fish sauce. I would prefer the pork barbecued, actually, but oh well, the marinade’s not bad too. Of course, fried spring roll is also delectable.
She did take a little while to prepare the dishes. I guess two other people had ordered phở before me, so that came in one batch. The phở ($ 4.90) — raw beef on top of silky noodles and whoosh, hot broth goes in! Also topped with fresh herbs. You can definitely see she takes pride in assembling her dishes.