I’ve been on a Bun Bo Hue run lately. It’s all I will order whenever we go to pho, and that’s at least once a week. And it all started with a visit to Cafe Xu Hue.
Cafe Xu Hue is a small restaurant on Kingsway. Not exactly hole-in-the-wall, as it’s quite bright and clean in there. However they have a tiny, tiny menu. It’s only 2 pages and there’s only 3 noodle soups on there. The rest are banh mi’s (Vietnamese subs), snacks, and drinks.
I was very excited to see that Cafe Xu Hue provide shredded banana blossom with their bean sprouts! The only other place I’ve had this was at Mui Ngo Gai, and the most recently time I went…they didn’t provide it anymore!
AngryRussian and I decided to share a bowl of Bun Bo Hue Dac Biet ($11.25). There was only one size.
I really had high hopes for the Bun Bo Hue here as it’s their specialty. However I was not wowed at all. I felt that the soup was quite bland and there really wasn’t very many noodles in the bowl. The pork hock meat was quite tough also and there wasn’t a lot of stuff in the bowl.
I felt the portion was quite small for the price. Usually for this price I get large bowl and we get leftover soup…not the case here.
I am a sucker for chewy things so I had to get the Banh Bot Loc ($6.50), which are steamed tapioca dumplings with dried shrimp and pork inside.
It came with a yummy sweet fish sauce dip. These were also bigger than the ones I had at Mui Ngo Gai. I liked the filling here more also. I really enjoyed these dumplings. The wrapper was SO chewy!
In conclusion I wasn’t impressed with the Bun Bo Hue but I liked the dumplings. I still found Cafe Xu Hue to be on the pricey side though considering, so unfortunately we probably won’t be back.
We had also wanted to try their banh mi’s but as we came close to closing time, they were sold out. I don’t think there’s enough of an urge for us to come back just to try the sandwiches though.
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