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When you can’t get hold of real Hainanese Chicken Rice, something close should be fine. Or is it?
We had chicken rice at two different Vietnamese restaurants in the capital of Canada and the plainer looking one shown above from “Huong’s Vietnamese Bistro” turned out to be the better rendition.
More fragrant and tender, the meat was from a medium-sized chicken, and arrived on a mound of aromatic ginger-flavoured rice accompanied by a mouthwatering ginger dip as well as a bowl of hot chicken soup.
Despite the absence of our beloved Singapore style chicken rice chilli sauce, we enjoyed it a lot.
Today’s brunch was at rated-very-well-on-google-map’s “Huong’s Vietnamese Bistro”.
I picked the Bun Riêu Cua, a dish of rice noodle (interestingly, it’s thick “bee hoon” and not the narrow “kway teow” that appears here) in a light, tangy, slightly sweet soup made from crab stock and tomatoes. A few pieces of tofu were included, along with four large meatballs that were much softer to the bite than I anticipated due to the addition of tofu in the minced pork. Unlike Pho, this was not served with a plate of raw beansprouts and fresh basil but a kind of shredded curly lettuce that was neutral in taste and became hardly noticeable once it spent a few seconds in the hot soup. Overall, I found Bun Riêu Cua a pleasant enough dish but to be frank, not something I would hurry to order again.
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