A New Des Moines Restaurant Worth Any Food ❤️’s Attention
Mongolian Beef! Banh Mi! Vermicelli Salad! And oh yes, the Pho.
UPDATE: A reader mentioned that on April 29th, this restaurant was cited for a number of food-safety violations. See notes in comments section, below.
Let me ask you this: what kind of restaurant reporter goes to a place called Pho Viet—a place with pho in the name—and doesn’t even order the pho? And who goes to a Vietnamese restaurant to order Mongolian Beef (a classic of the Chinese-American canon)?
Oops! That would be me!
To explain: I like pho, but whenever I order it, I always wish I’d gone for the rice-vermicelli salad instead—those hot-cold noodle salads piled with textures, flavors, and unexpected bites. Like this one:
And when there’s Mongolian Beef on the menu, I’ll almost always order that. Banh mi? Absolutely. Pho’s about my fourth-favorite thing in a Vietnamese restaurant.
So when Lisa Kingsley, a former restaurant reviewer for The Des Moines Register, and now a long-time food editor in town, happens to walk in, then mentions she’ll probably or…