An Restaurant - Bankstown

An Restaurant - so pho so good (ah, witty witty)

Our new youth pastor at church has been raving on and on and on about how the BEST pho in town is at Pho An in Bankstown. Not needing much to be convinced, our youth group (a crowd of around 25) trekked down to Bankstown for this supposedly awesomeness pho.

When I eat pho, I think of a modest size restaurant, possibly fit around 50 odd people. At An Restaurant, it was like a giant canteen, the size of a normal Chinese restaurant - except that they just serve pho!

Being able to speak the language, our helpful youth pastor ordered for us in Viet. One minute (or less) after the order was placed, the food was infront of us. Talk about speedy service! Beats any fast food joints I've been to!

One of the most popular pho's of the night was the raw beef pho (Ve) - with the main attraction of the dish being, obviously, the raw beef. The other popular order of the night was the beef special (Tai) which has a combination of raw beef, beef tendon, beef tripe and possibly other beefy things.

Being special, I ordered the Sach, which was beef tripe pho. I have never seen beef tripe cut the way it was (cut somewhat longitudinally, but not completely longitudinally... kind of hard to describe). But I guess my point is, because of the way it was cut, the beef tripe was so super tender and so super able to soak up the flavours of the soup. I was amazed~

All pho's came with onion, and shallot and herbs. There are two sizes. The "medium" was $12, the "large" was $13. Where's the small???

Raw beef noodle - medium $12, large $13

Beef Special - medium $12, large $13

Beef Tripe Noodles - medium $12, large $13

So what makes this pho so great? Was it the bowl of chilli that they give you? The sauces? According to my youth pastor, it's all in the soup. Some of my friends drank up all the soup, to the very last drop. My partner's opinion of the soup was that it felt "cleaner" than most other Viet places. I tried to understand what he meant by this, but he just couldn't verbalise it. I guess the soup was less polluted? But having said that, it probably contained around the same amount of MSG as other Viet pho places.

Nonetheless, although the actual service was minimal, I was in awe of the speed at which the food came out. Food-wise, it was a good viet noodle soup (with the best beef tripe I've ever had). The ice coffee at the place is also quite awesome (tastes like a coffee-lolly). Was it worth the drive down? Well... once in a while it's okay I guess.

Ratings:
Food - 7.5/10
Service - 7/10
Ambiance - 6/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 27.5/40

An Restaurant
27 Greenfield Parade
Bankstown, NSW, 2200
Tel: (02) 9796 7826