Monday, July 20, 2009

They said they served Udon...

...And they did, sort-of.

Today, I visited Pho Lien Hoa (901 NW 23rd Street, Oklahoma City, OK -Open 9AM to 9 PM all week long). If you know where the infamous Miriwa Chinese Restaurant is, Pho Lien Hoa is just to the west of that place.

The store always seems pretty busy. Of the 30 or so available tables, most were packed.
A word of advice: they do not accept any credit cards.

The atmosphere is pleasant: there is a fish tank and many pieces of artwork; the tables are oddly futuristic-looking; I especially enjoyed the cow diagram showing, in Vietnamese, the names of various meat cuts.

As the title of this post would suggest, I went because I had heard they served udon. Udon is a thick wheat noodle of Japanese origin, and one of my favorites (Udon wo daisuki desu yo!). Besides the udon, egg and glass noodled soups are available with an intriguing array of additives. Each soup only comes in one size and costs around $6.50 apiece.
I ordered the shrimp & pig leg udon soup. I could not ask for a nicer vegi plate: jalapeƱo, very sweet limes, bean sprouts, saw-toothed herb, and thai basil.

The soup itself, though containing a higher meat:fat ratio than I could have expected, was only okay. The broth was okay. The meat was okay. There were a lot of onions- green and bulbs. The udon noodles were very bad: they had been long overcooked and then chopped into fragments of between 1 and 3 inches.

Overall, I suppose they rate "1 & a half Silver Doughnuts" (out of a possible 5).

I'm sure that many people love this place, but for the way they treated those poor udon noodles, I will not be returning.