Coming to a West End near you, a slice of Little Hanoi. Let Pho fever be unleashed. Again. Yep, you feel it too don’t you. It is starting, Cay Tre is going to sweep the intertubes, and with good reason: they flog smashing Vietnamese food to the public.

Many of you are already quite familiar with the Vietnamese Kitchen’s group of restaurants, namely Cay Tre and Viet Grill, which counts Mark Hix, amongst its many fans. This time round however, Mr Hix happens to also be a very involved stakeholder with Hieu Trung Bui’s latest venture.

So it is little surprise that the new Cay Tre in Dean Street shares much of its menu with the Hoxton branch and Viet Grill, such as the theatrical Chả cá Lã Vọng and the incastratable Mekong Catfish.

Reminiscent of Viet Grill, but one in which its decor has been given a spit shine of the highest order. Pristine, white enamel table tops, black chairs with black leather cushions, wooden panel walls, painted white and pressed against cement walls (also painted white). Wah… so clean. The room is long and narrow, a little clastrophobic, and if you squint, you would be forgiven for mistaking this to be NOPI, but with less brass. Much less brass.

My eating schedule is all screwed up these days, so lunch for us was at the sleepy hour of three on a Saturday afternoon. Understandably, you lot were all frolicking in Hampstead Heath or licking ice cream cones at Gelupo, so the restaurant was completely empty. All this space to me and the missus then.

We chose from a limited afternoon menu, that listed large bowls of pho, plates of rice and small bowls nibbly things. Prices range from £8 to £9 for the large ones, and £4 to £7 for the small bowls. Now the afternoon deal was £14 for a large and a small, so we very carefully chose the priciest pairs in order to maximum the discount.

Grilled calamari with lemongrass, coriander and chilli oil, £7.

Nice. These small bowls were so large, they put the entire shrinking small plates revolution to shame. You seeing this Nopi? This is how big, small plates should look like.

Large parcels of cut squid, simply charred, but served with a stonkingly great dipping sauce. Was it the lemongrass that I was tasting, the chilli oil, or was there more to the secret ? It tasted like a fire breathing bitter burnt chocolate gravy with chilli and oil doused over it. What a great dipping sauce. Ka pow.

Cha la lot. Spicy ground pork wrapped in betel leaves, served with roasted peanuts and nuoc cham, £7.

The nuoc cham was a sweet chilli drizzle, which was less exciting than the calamari’s dipper, but this one was great for the vermicelli. I’m sure I’ve had something quite similar on my many visits to Viet Grill.

Ox Cheek au Vin Pho, £9.

Stop the press, or the blogging and run out to Cay Tre, now. This was the best bowl of food I had had all week long. I don’t think the combination of ox cheek and pho has been done yet, at least this was a first for me, and I have got to say: This is a winner. A real winner. You and I both know how good ox cheeks can get when they are slow cooked to off-the-bone, tenderness, with the melt-the-glacier tendons falling off the meat and such. The cheeks were absolutely divine, cubes of silky, slithery and buttery clumps of protein. So tender, they deformed like marshmallows do under the stress of a metal fork. Extremely generous chunks of cheeks were allotted to this bowl of pho, I counted five, maybe six, or perhaps seven. Everytime the soup spoon went in, the better half scooped up yet another piece of meat.

Lemongrass and marrow rich and it wasn’t spicy at all (which suited me fine.) the soup stock was great, but I couldn’t really tell if it were greater than the Cafe East version. Truth be told, I can’t actually tell the difference between Kingsland road’s finest versus Cafe East, but what I can conclude is that they are all good enough for an enjoyable experience. But if you pressed a gun to my head, I would probably say the Cafe East version was better.

I thought this ox cheek pho was a real knock out punch. A superb combo, the depth of richness in the ox cheeks really does do the pho alot of justice. I could really do with another bowl of this as I write this. Go try this, and then come back here to tell me if I’m right or if I’m dead wrong.

Com Saigon. Grilled pork and shredded pork fillet, served with a fried duck egg and jasmine rice. £9

I’m a rice fella, Chinese roots and all, I need my steamed rice. The better half is from down under, so she’s a better judge of the soupy stuff, but I pride myself as a man who lives by the grain, a man who swears by his one plate meat + rice, and by those estimations, this was not the best pork fillet rice I’d yet had. It was alright, but just nothing to shout about.

The best Viet style pork chops on rice I’ve tried in London were at Song Que, and the best pork chops on rice I’ve ever tried were at a restaurant called ‘Black Shop Pork Chop Rice‘ in Danshui, about a 20 minute train ride from Taipei to the coastal town. Not a fair comparison, since the latter are pork chop rice experts. If you ever visit, GO THERE.

Puddings are at least another 2 weeks before they make it on to the menu, and I hazard a guess that it will include the tapioca, durian and coconut. Plus two glasses of Vietnamese coffee, the bill was a respectable £37.12.

All in all, I think Cay Tre is a wonderful addition to Soho. We’ve all made the eastward pilgrimage to sample the internet’s favourite Vietnamese cafes, and much of what I love about Viet Grill, has (seemingly) been successfully transposed to the new site in Dean Street.

Now if only Cafe East would do a ‘Cafe West’ and open right next door to Cay Tre. They are the momentary master of pho… and the three colour drink, and would it be so bad for the two restaurants to duel for our affections. Wishful thinking? Stranger things have happened.

The Gist of It

Cay Tre Soho
Vietnamese, £20pp
44 Dean Street, W1D 4QD
Tel: (020) 7317 9118
Tube : Piccadilly Circus

Pho now: Skinny Bib , Greedy Diva , Time Out London , Fay Maschler

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Winter has well and truly arrived. As I write this on a bitterly cold Friday morning, there is but a shallow layer of snow building outside, not quite enough for me to stab my feet into it with heavy boots, but enough for me to feel Christmassy. I’m usually averse to boiling hot and soupy things (my tongue bruises very easily with heat), but my numbing senses needed some thawing, and what better way to do so, than to snuggle up next to my special half and dip our heads into a pot of boiling water. Blub, blub.

Mitsukoshi is a Japanese department store – a huge one – and it’s origins can be traced as far back as the 17th century. Talk about staying power. It has a small outpost right here in Piccadilly Circus. It’s small inside, and personally I find the space just a tad claustrophobic. I’ve always found it abit puzzling as to why Japanese tourist choose to shop in a Japanese store when they could splash their cash on more ‘local’ goods and services which otherwise cannot be found in their homeland. I’m convinced there’s a good reason for it.

Anyway, in the basement lies Mitsukoshi restaurant, which I didn’t know about until I was taken there – what a surprise, and I thought I knew my Japanese restaurants in London. The space really feels like Asia, or more accurately, it felt like I had just boarded Singapore Airlines. Red carpets, red wooden tables, elevator music…, I mean lift music. It was like watching a US hit TV show in which the main characters had to fly to an exotic location, like say Hong Kong. As the audience, you play along with it, and the producers make the setting look believable enough, but not enough to convince you that its actually on foreign soil. You thinking about the same show as me? Yuppers, I’m thinking about the midseason Flash Forward cliffclanger which went down in ‘Hong Kong’. (Wedeck’s killer filofax that murdered his 40″ LCD was pretty hilarious with a ninja throw.) Oh how I do digress.

We kicked off proceedings with a fresh sashimi salad, finished with a spicy sauce.

Oily, odourless, smooth and silky – the fish were all fresh, and the spicy tangy wasabi drizzle complimented this salad well, our palattes suitably cleanse, we could now move on to the shabu-shabu.

We were bemused when the waitress uncovered the lid on the pot – it was just boiling water – no soup base, no stock… huh? We didn’t find out till after the meal, that this is how proper shabu-shabu is meant to be presented. Boiling water, sukiyaki beef (very thinly sliced) and vegetables, which in this case included tofu and enoki mushrooms. Each of us also had two personal bowls of dipping sauce – one was a citrusy soya sauce, and the other was a sort of thick sesame sauce. I googled this and my findings led me to believe that the shabu-shabu is a variation of the Nabemono (Nabe – “Cooking Pot” Mono – “things”) , which is similar (in spirit) to the steamboat, or the hotpot in other cuisines. As I am intimately connected to Taiwan; the Taiwanese version is also served along side personal bowls of dipping sauce but instead it is made with a spicy sauce known as shacha sauce and also with raw egg – a stellar combo if you should ever try it. (The raw egg yolk is the secret to the dipping sauce)

Anyway, I’m used to dipping my sukiyaki into flavoured soup bases instead of just plain hot water, so I ate this meal mostly feeling as if something was missing. The sesame dip while good, wasn’t quite as satisfying as the shacha+raw egg combo that I had been exposed to either. So the shabu-shabu (which literally means swish swish) was abit wishy washy for me, at best – too plain.

We also ordered two sushi rolls – one was unagi with avocado and the other was a spider roll, which was crisply fried soft shell crab – both of which went down well. After wolfing down the meat and veges; udon was brought to our table and we ended our meal slurping (at least I did, where are my table manners, eh) noodles into the night… The restaurant was filled with Japanese families and what appeared to be silver haired exec types in jeans enjoying a quiet one away from the family. As I left the restaurant, I also stole a peek into the sushi bar, to which I noticed a Japanese dude in a suit (probably after work) entertaining a lady (also) in a suit (also probably after work) tucking away nigiri and a couple of cans of Kirin. Atmospheric, I’m convinced I was transported to Japan for just that fleeting moment in time.

More photographs from the meal on my flickr account here.

The Gist of It

Mitsukoshi Restaurant official site
14-20 Lower Regent Street SW1Y 4PH
Tel : 020 7930 0317
Tube: Piccadilly Circus

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