Day: October 14, 2011

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Thuan Hoa Vietnamese Restaurant, Lethbridge

After work, I needed to get away from the apartment complex, so I decided to walk to a restaurant for dinner. I was in the mood for ‘exotic’ and decided to head over to a Vietnamese restaurant, Thuan Hoa, near head office, about 1.5 km away. It just so happened that Jody’s daughter recommended it to me during Thanksgiving lunch.

I haven’t had Vietnamese in ages, maybe even since I left Ottawa. I used to meet a friend at a Vietnamese restaurant in the Hull sector of Gatineau on a regular basis, with my favourite dish being squid in a sweet and spicy black bean sauce served with tasty minty spring rolls. So tonight I looked forward to a wonderful, fragrant, tasty dinner.

Well. There was nothing wrong with the food at Thuan Hoa Vietnamese Restaurant, but it was bland! What?!

I had the dinner combo 1A: two salad rolls, a spring roll, vermicelli, and pork, for $11.50. When I’d looked at the menu online, it said I could add a bubble tea for $2.50, but I found out that was just for take out orders. The server let me have it for that price anyway since I had waited so patiently to order; I asked for a mango tea.

The salad rolls were very pretty roll ups of rice paper, vermicelli, shrimp, cucumber, and lettuce served with a sweet peanut dipping sauce. Where was the Vietnamese mint?! Without the sauce, the rolls had great texture but no taste.

Dinner came in a giant bowl. If I had known the portions were going to be so outrageous, I would have had only one roll and half the dinner and brought the rest home. Anyway, the dinner was a bed of vermicelli over which were a carroty over-cooked spring roll (at least there was sweet fish dipping sauce on the side), really tasty crispy pork, and more lettuce and cucumber. I had to drizzle peanut sauce over everything to get any real flavour.

The mango bubble tea was a huge disappointment. It was the creamy kind that was pure sugar. The tapioca bubbles literally made my teeth hurt they were so sweet. I thought I’d had bad bubble tea before, but this was terrible! I didn’t even finish it. Next time I want a mango bubble tea, I’ll do like I did last time, and pay the $5 for a fresh juice one at Umi Sushi.

It would be grossly unfair of me to say that this was a terrible meal. Tea excepted, everything was fresh and beautifully prepared with generous portions. I just can’t get used to the way flavour is stripped out of cuisines out west to suit the meat and potatoes palate of the population. The only thing I was pleased with was the pork. I’ve only just started to eat pork again and am finicky about grizzle, but this was cooked and seasoned perfectly. It’s just a shame that everything else was so plain.

The restaurant is very popular and was super busy. I won’t be going back, but I can’t categorically not recommend it. It was really a case of the food not being right for me rather than the food not being right.

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Special Deliveries

I was thrilled to have Jody stopped in yesterday afternoon for a quick visit. She brought me some of her addictive banana-chocolate chip muffins. I terribly miss raiding her kitchen for them in the late evening. 🙂 It was nice to sit and chat for a bit. I think I surprised Jody when I pulled some pop out of the fridge for her. I don’t drink the stuff, but I figured that I’d have her over at least a few times during the winter, so I bought a case of a type I see her drink often.

This morning, I was sitting here working on some stuff and trying to ignore the sound of the contractors going about their business a few doors down until it was closer to my starting time of 10. I’m working really hard at drawing that line between work and home right from the start. But the inevitable knock on the door came… I was still in my pjs, so I quickly threw on a long skirt, a sweater, and a kerchief. I checked the peephole and it was one of my minor maintenance guys. Oy, I hate starting my day like this… I opened up and he handed me a Tim Hortons cup! That was all, he was delivering the Friday treat from our boss and figured there was no reason to wait another half hour.

Between muffins for breakfast and overly sweet (but yummy!) ‘French vanilla cappucino’, I have come to realise that, hey, it’s Friday! I’ve just about survived my second week in The Apartment.