PHO KEVIN

Today I visited PHOKEVIN in Laurel with my co-worker Kristi who loves it as much as I do. This is the first of many blogs for my readers who love PHO!  

The premise of these are to give an in-depth review of the places I visit and let those who are interested know how a place rates.  I enjoy feedback and would love to go with you to your favorite PHO place and blog with you!

At first glance from the outside, you can see that this used to be some sort of Chinese Restaurant, however the outside is clean and the parking is abundant.  Upon entering there is a large area for seating with booths on both sides, a few round tables in the middle and a large bar in the back.  The bathroom is also in the back next to the kitchen.  One annoying thing is the large soda refrigerator, in the back right, is quite noisy at times so if you want quiet I would stay away from that area.

We were seated and attended to rather quickly with lime water and a menu. I prefer lime water, so that was a plus, guess I'm a little weird like that, however they did not give you any chance to ask for plain water or lemon.  The young man who waited on us provided us with menus and some time to review.

The menu was the usual with appetizers, drinks, PHO, fried plates and bubble tea.  Impressed that there were 15 different PHO choices, one being Pho Hai San which is a seafood PHO.  Some restaurants do not offer this.  We both ordered the appetizer summer roll and each a large bowl of PHO.  This restaurant actually had a spot for extra toppings and their costs listed in the menu.

The chopstick and soup spoon provide were very nice.  The spoon was fine china and relatively deep and not cheaply made.  The chopsticks were heavy and very easy to use with a weighted back shown by the inlay of some sort of marble or chipped stone in it.

The summer rolls were thick and very flavorful with shrimp and beef wrapped together.  Then there is the peanut sauce, oh that delicious, brown, thick oh so amazing peanut sauce.  :)
These were some of the better summer rolls I have had and the sauce was just as delicious.  I have had some thin flavorless peanut sauce in my time, however this was not one of them.

I ordered the PHO GA (chicken) and Kristi had the PHO DAC BIET (eye-round, rare steak, brisket, tendon and tripe).  These beautiful dishes came out very hot along wit the usual condiments of basil, bean sprouts, lime and jalapeños.  The usual sauces were present as well, the hoisin, siracha, hot pepper sauce and soy.

Before actually dropping everything in I ordered extra noodles on the side, however the noodles were very plentiful and I found myself not needing them at all.  I decided to actually enjoy the very flavorful broth first before adding the toppings.  It was extremely flavorful and I took a few spoonfuls before adding the toppings.

PHO DAC BIET

                                                  PHO GA

In the end we were both happy with our PHO, the place and the service.  One thing was that Kristi  did not enjoy the tripe, as it had a difficult texture to swallow, plus it just looked wrong.  We both had large containers to take home and I finished off mine for dinner.  Right now there seems to be a young guy and a woman doing most of the service, however as they become more popular and have more customers they will need to hire more staff.  It took a little longer than normal to get our check and their was no fortune cookie at the end.  

All in all I would recommend this PHO place in Laurel and give it 3 basil leave bunches out of 5.