I’ve realized pretty quickly that this dining review column has to be more than me telling you about my favorite restaurants (of which there are many). It can become as much a voyage of discovery for me as for you. As such, for this week’s installment of Cuisine Corner, I started taking suggestions from my roommates as to new places to try. One suggestion I got was Pho-nomenon, a relatively new restaurant I had walked by many times, but never been inside.
Pho-nomenon Noodle Shop opened about a year ago at 516 Washington Street, right in the heart of Hoboken’s dining scene and just a stone’s throw away from campus. While Hoboken has a number of restaurants offering Asian cuisine, mostly Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai, Pho-nomenon is something truly unique. Specializing in Vietnamese cuisine, their chief dish is pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup with thin rice noodles, herbs and sprouts, and some kind of meat. The meats can range from steak, pork, and brisket to more eclectic meats such as tendon and tripe (stomach lining; personal experience, tastes fine but the texture is a non-starter); they also offer a seafood pho, which we’ll get to later.
Starting off with drinks, my roommate ordered Vietnamese Iced Coffee, which they have you make it yourself by bringing it hot with a glass full of ice. To quote, “They did it right.” I was set to order the Young Coconut juice, but our waitress gestured to the specials board out front, which had at the top: “Fresh Coconut.” I bit, and shortly after, the juice was brought, straight out of a romantic comedy at a tropical resort, as a whole coconut with a straw sticking out. As advertised, it was a coconut cracked open for the milk inside, fresh as they come. If I could change one thing, if the hole in the top had been a bit larger, I could have started scooping out the coconut meat on the inside.
Just as a word of warning, while not sampled that day, they do advertise bubble tea in multiple flavors (including my favorite, Taro), but you’ll find better quality bubble tea at Satay Malaysian Cuisine and Caffe Bene if you’re willing to walk down towards the train station.
For appetizers, we were somewhat limited by my roommate’s shellfish allergy, so we ended up ordering the beef satay sticks and pork dumplings. Since most Asian restaurants have some kind of dumplings, their quality can be a good barometer. All in all, decent dumplings, nothing to particularly write home about, but solid. The beef sticks were also plenty good, and they come with a special peanut dipping sauce that, once we checked to make sure there was no shellfish, both of us enjoyed.
As for entrees, I naturally tried the pho, specifically the Seafood Noodle Pho, which was somewhat similar to the Udon I’ve tried numerous times at Ayame, but with more vegetables. The seafood featured shrimp, crab sticks, and fish balls, which I’ve encountered plenty in Asian dishes but have yet to find out their composition. The soup was solid, and the Sriracha added by recommendation added a decent kick to the soup (I put in a bit too much for a Sriracha rookie, making the coconut juice plenty useful). My roommate went a little higher on the price chain and ordered one of the house specials, the Crispy Fried Flounder. As advertised, the dish was a big helping of flounder, fried and covered in a spicy and sour sauce that tasted kind of like sweet chili sauce, a Southeast Asian staple. While the sauce was a bit too sweet for his taste, he liked it overall and had plenty to take home for lunch the next day.
Asian restaurants in Hoboken are a dime a dozen, each offering a subtle twist or something special that distinguishes them from the crowd; Pho-nomenon isn’t too different. With a few dishes and drinks that stand out (for better or worse), most of their dishes are decent and worth a trip. And, while I can’t comment as to their authenticity as true Vietnamese cuisine, they make a good noodle soup and won’t leave you broke. In the end, if you’re looking for a very particular kind of Asian flair, Pho-nomenon is a decent option along Hoboken’s main drag.
Be First to Comment