Vegetarian Pho from Mana Food Bar
Item Purchased: Vegetarian Pho
Location Purchased: Mana Food Bar / 1742 W Division St / Chicago, IL
Price: $6.00 + tax
Purchased on: 07/28/08
Review: Perhaps devout vegetarians will accept Mana Food Bar’s version of Vietnamese Pho, but it takes more than a bowl of rice noodles to convince me.
Maybe I am biased, because I am used to the beefy broth of traditional Pho, but I’ve tried full and robustly flavored versions of vegetarian Pho in the past.
This, my friends, doesn’t even come close.
I’m sure everyone reading this has found themselves preparing a bowl of cheap liquor store ramen noodles and has forgotten to add the foil packet of powdered flavoring to the broth. Yeah… That’s what this was like… With slightly better noodles.
Six bucks will get you a small cereal bowl full of perfectly fine and well cooked rice noodles at Mana. On one side of the bowl, sits a smattering of “asian vegetables” such as Thai basil and what tasted like fresh mint. Somewhere, swimming among the noodles, in a broth as flavorful as Chicago tap water, sits a pre-squeezed lime slice which may or may not have been drizzled into the bowl.
Six bucks will get you an adequately sized bowl of these things, which makes you yearn for the 10-for-a-buck ramen sales at Walgreens with every bite you manage to take.
Simplicity is one thing, but flavor is another. For the former to work, the latter must be present.
Guess which one was a no show.
Rating: 1.5 / 5
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Posted by consumatron on July 30th, 2008 filed in Uncategorized
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