Road Tips

Miss Phay Cafe - Davenport, IA

A year ago this past summer, we had heard that a new restaurant was going to open in the space of a former Mexican restaurant in a space just north of the downtown area of Davenport on Brady Street hill.  We would drive past the place for the next few months and we saw little to no work going on in the space.  Suddenly, earlier this spring we noticed that work was starting on the space.  Things started to take shape and we could see that they were putting some nice touches on the place.  It turned out that it was going to be a new Asian restaurant called Miss Phay Cafe.  One recent night when I didn't feel like cooking, my wife and I made the trek down to Miss Phay Cafe to check the place out.  

Mun Luangruang grew up in Thailand and knew her way around a kitchen at a very early age.  She would help her grandmother cook food for customers of her fathers rice mill who came far and wide to have their rice processed.  Luangruang eventually immigrated to the United States 1996 to join her family in Los Angeles.  Her father had opened a Thai restaurant in Los Angeles and Mun and other family members helped out.  She knew very little English when she came to the U.S., but working in the restaurant helped her learn the language. 

While in Los Angeles, Luangruang met a man whom she eventually married.  Her husband got a job at John Deere in the Quad Cities and the two moved to the area in 2000.  In 2001, a new Japanese steakhouse was opening in Davenport and Mun got a job working there.  It was at the restaurant where she met she met Kevin Zhang, a fellow Thai immigrant who was culinary-trained in China and Switzerland before moving to the U.S.  At the time, there was only one Thai restaurant in the Quad Cities and the two felt there was a need for another good Thai restaurant in the area.  In 2002 they opened Exotic Thai on E. 53rd St. in Davenport.  

Zhang soon left the endeavor and opened Crazy Wok - later renamed Tantra Asian Bistro - a competing Thai restaurant in Davenport.  Luangruang then partnered with her father and brother to open a second Exotic Thai in Moline in 2004, then they opened the LemonGrass Cafe, a combination Thai/Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Moline.  

Initially, they announced that they would open a second LemonGrass Cafe in Davenport last year.  But they decided to rename it Miss Phay Cafe instead.  Miss Phay is an imaginary character who grew up in Bangkok and has cultural backgrounds from Thailand, China and Vietnam.  The fictional Miss Phay immigrated to the United States and is said to tell stories of her homeland through her foods and traditions.  By enthusiastically presenting her cuisine, culture and beliefs, Miss Phay brings part of her life to people in the Quad Cities.  

Or something like that...

We were able to find parking just in front of Miss Phay on Brady Street, the main northbound street out of downtown Davenport.  (see map)  The building that houses Miss Phay has seen a number of businesses and restaurants come and go out of the location over the years.  Most recently, it was the home to a Mexican restaurant that closed up about two years ago.  

Stepping inside Miss Phay, you go directly into the bar area.  It's rather nice in there with hard wood floors, a small bar, some booths, and a subdued lighting scheme.  Miss Phay also has coffee and Asian-style breakfast items that are served in the bar area from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily.  

We were greeted by a young lady and taken into the main dining area through an opening from the bar side.   The room had a large floral print on the wall with a two level dining area.  There was a small alcove on one side that had banquette seating on either side of a fireplace.  Asian art and bamboo basket light shades were very noticeable throughout the room.  

The young lady gave us a couple menus and we took a quick look at their drink menu.  They have a handful of specialty cocktails at Miss Phay Cafe including a signature drink called Passion Project - Malibu rum, guava liqueur, passion fruit juice, lemon and lime juice, and finished with fresh basil and mint leaves.  Wine and beer were also available from the bar.  My wife got a glass of the Forest Glen merlot and I got a pint of the Easy Eddy hazy pale from Big Grove Brewery, one of the rotating tap beer they have at Miss Phay.

The menu tilted more toward Vietnamese cuisine, but there was definitely an emphasis on Southeast Asian specialties.  There was a lemongrass pork chop on the menu, Asian barbecued pork, a bok choy stir fry with a choice of chicken, shrimp or pork belly, and a Cambodian-style rice/noodle soup, ground pork, Vietnamese ham, pork belly, shrimp and a fish ball.   It was all pretty interesting.  

I wanted to try one of their spring rolls, so I ordered up a couple of the shrimp spring rolls for my wife and me.  A small tub of peanut hoisin sauce came on the side.  It was actually pretty good.  I thought that I probably could've had a couple orders just for myself for dinner and I would have been happy.      

But I ended up going with a bowl of pho - chunks of steak and brisket with meat balls and the regular pho ingredients including bean sprouts, chopped basil, green onions and ginger.  Fresh basil leaves and a spicy hoisin sauce came on the side.  The base of the pho is a hearty beef broth that's rich in taste as it's simmered for 8 hours.  Rice noodles are added to the pho just before serving.  It was very good.  I did my best to finish what I could, but it was a lot of food. 

My wife likes the chicken dishes over at LemonGrass Cafe, so on this visit to Miss Phay she went with the vermicelli with a grilled lemongrass and turmeric chicken breast.   It came with chopped lettuce, sprouts, cucumbers, and fresh herbs.  Chopped peanuts and crispy shallots were sprinkled on the top of the chicken breast.  A bowl of Nuoc Cham, a sort of sweet and sour dipping sauce, came on the side.  My wife thought her meal was absolutely delicious.  However, like me, she found the portion to be a little too much.  When our waitress came back to check on us toward the end of our meal, she asked my wife if she wanted a to-go box. But my wife declined saying that it could never be as good re-heated as it was in the restaurant.  

Our dinner was made even more interesting as a man dining alone was obviously hitting on our waitress.  He was seated at a table near us, but still spaced enough for social distancing.  He asked her out twice and she rebuffed him both times.  But she was still friendly to him and it was obvious this guy was smitten with her.  We try not to listen to conversations at other tables, but this guy was pretty easy to hear.  

We found Miss Phay Cafe to be a nice little place to get an Asian-inspired meal.  We immediately decided that we would add Miss Phay to our rotation of Southeast Asian food restaurants that we'll go to in the Quad Cities.  It had everything that we like in a restaurant - a nice atmosphere with a friendly and accommodating staff.  They had very good food and having beer, wine and specialty drinks is a plus.  As I said, I could go back just to have a drink and some spring rolls.  We really enjoyed our visit.  

California Pho - Davenport, IA

For some reason, I was driving along W. Kimberly Road in Davenport a few weeks ago and I happened to look over at a small strip mall that housed a few businesses including a space that was a former pizza place, then a Chinese restaurant.  In the space that the restaurants had occupied, I noticed that there was now a Vietnamese restaurant in their place.  Not long after that, my wife and I decided to head over to California Pho to check things out.  

The west side of Davenport hasn't been friendly to restaurants since I moved to the area in 1991.  Only a handful of restaurants have made it more than two years in the area west of Division Street.  The space that houses California Pho was first a pizza place - Upper Crust Pizza - that was not the typical Quad Cities-style pizza that proliferate the area and are universally liked only by people who grew up in the Quad Cities.  

Of course, that place didn't last more than a couple of years before it was turned into a pseudo-Chinese restaurant called CreAsian that basically morphed into a Chinese buffet restaurant in a couple of years.  It, too, closed about three years after it opened.  

Quang Le is a Vietnamese immigrant who opened an Asian grocery store by the name of Oriental Food Store in Davenport in 1999.  Business was so good after awhile that Quang moved to a new and bigger location along River Drive on the west side of downtown Davenport in 2010.  On the weekends, the market had a restaurant - Pho 999 - that served authentic Vietnamese foods.  As the popularity of Pho 999 grew, Quang decided to find a place where he could be open every day.  He found the open spot that used to house the pizza restaurant, then the Chinese restaurant and opened California Pho last summer.  

California Pho is located on the far west side of Davenport along W. Kimberly Road, the main east-road through the heart of the city.  (see map)  There's plenty of parking in the strip mall's parking lot and there wasn't a lot of people in the place that evening.  The decor is tasteful and comfortable, and the dining area was well-lit.  

We took a seat in a booth along the west wall of the restaurant and were given menus to look through.  Curiously, the man who seated us and gave us the menu hovered near the table possibly thinking we were going to order something right away.  I noticed that they didn't have any beer on the menu and I asked him if they had a beer list.  "No beer," he said.  He continued to stand next to our table before my wife said, "Uh, we'll both take some water."  "Water, sure," he said with a smile and went away.  

"What was up with that," I questioned my wife.

"Boy, beats me," she said.  "He must have thought we were ready to order or something."

Sure enough after he brought back two glasses of water, he hovered near our table once again.  Finally, my wife said, "Uh, give us a couple of minutes to look over the menu.  This is our first visit." 

"Sure, sure," he said with a smile and he went away.  My wife and I sort of looked at each other with amused smirks on our faces.  

We're still far from being experts in Vietnamese food, but it looked like they had the basics on the menu.  Of course, they had different styles of pho, vermicelli - or bún in Vietnamese, rice or egg noodle soups, and either steamed rice or fried rice entrees where you can add pork, chicken or seafood to the mix.  One thing that I was sort of surprised that they didn't have were banh mi sandwiches.  I sort of thought that was a staple in most Vietnamese restaurants, but not at California Pho.  They did, however, have spring rolls filled with shrimp, pork, vermicelli noodles, and lettuce all rolled up in rice paper and served with a spicy sweet sauce.  The spring rolls were very good and tasted very fresh.  It was a nice start to the meal.

My wife ended up ordering the fried rice combination with shrimp and chicken.  It was a large helping of the combination fried rice and it was colorfully adorned with red and green pepper slices, raisins, chopped veggies, and topped with cilantro sprigs.  She said it was very good, but there was no way that she could eat the whole plate.  

Still not willing to venture outside of my comfort zone with Vietnamese food, I got the pho with meatballs.  They actually had some interesting pho offerings that included pho with rare beef filet, pho with rare steak slices and well-done brisket, and the phò tái chin gâu gân sách - pho with rare steak, well-done brisket, fatty flank steak, soft tendon and trip.  Uh, no - I'm not quite ready to go that far just yet.  

But the pho with meatballs was good - the meatballs were sliced into quarters and there was plenty of them mixed in with the noodles and fresh cilantro in the hearty broth.  It, too, was a large portion - something that we're finding with the Vietnamese restaurants we've visited.  But it was a spot hitter for me that evening.

We're still learning about Vietnamese food, but we're starting to get better opinions as to the things we eat.  I was happy enough with my meatball pho at California Pho while my wife enjoyed her combination fried rice with chicken and shrimp.  The spring rolls we had as a starter were very good with a crisp and fresh taste to them.  We're hoping that California Pho bucks the trend of restaurants on the west side of Davenport going away after a couple three years.  We don't mind the drive over to that side of town to eat there.  But I'm hoping people closer to the place discover how good of food they have to offer at California Pho. 

Saigon Bistro - Davenport, IA

My wife and I have tried to broaden our culinary horizons over the past few months and Vietnamese food has come into the rotation of regular places we like to try.  A place that is about a five minute drive from our house in Davenport is a small place on 53rd Ave. by the name of Saigon Bistro.  On a recent cool and wet evening when neither of us wanted to cook at home, we went to Saigon Bistro.  (see map)

Generally, I'm able to easily find information on restaurants on the Internet - who owns them, history of the restaurant, etc.  But I couldn't find anything on the background of Saigon Bistro, other than they opened quietly in 2011.  Even local business web sites didn't list who the owner was.  So, going into our first visit to Saigon Bistro a few weeks before this particular visit, we didn't know much about the place.  

It turns out that their specialty is pho (pronounced "fuh"), the flavorful rice noodle broth Vietnamese soup that you can add beef strips, meatballs, chicken or seafood to and make it a full meal.  They have a number of pho dishes on the menu at Saigon Bistro, as well as vermicelli - rice noodles with shredded lettuce, shredded carrots, sliced cucumbers, mint leaves, and bean sprouts with either meat or seafood added - kabobs, grilled flank steak, and a number of rice plates with meat, vegetables or seafood that can be added.  They also have bento box meals and banh mi sandwiches on the menu at Saigon Bistro.   

Saigon Bistro is not that big of a place.  It's situated in the corner of a strip mall along 53rd Ave. and seats about 40 people.  We took a table along a short wall that sort of separates two small dining areas in the restaurant.  

I was sort of leaning toward getting the beef pho combo, but the pork vermicelli was looking pretty interesting, as well.  The pork egg noodle soup also sounded pretty good for a cool and misty evening.  And I thought about getting the beef with broccoli rice dish, but I usually like getting that at our favorite little Thai restaurant down the way from Saigon Bistro, Tantra Thai Bistro.  

Cindy wanted to try the spring rolls as an appetizer.  They featured steamed shrimp and steamed pork with vermicelli lettuce, bean sprouts and mint leaves wrapped in rice paper.  They were served with a soy sauce with some other stuff mixed in.  Didn't quite know what was in there, but it tasted good with the spring rolls.  The rolls were very good - there were lots of different flavors going on, but they all tasted good together.   

She got the Vermicelli with scallops for her dinner.   It featured a large bowl of a mixture of chopped veggies and rice noodles with medium sized scallops.  She declared it to be very good.  And there was a lot of it in her bowl, so much that she couldn't finish it all.

I got the beef combo pho with both the meatballs and the thin beef brisket slices.  The brisket slices were well done - as described on the menu - and they were a little tough to chew.  The meatballs were good sized and there were plenty of them in the pho.  And they tasted pretty darned good.  The broth was a little underwhelming compared to other pho's I've had, which - admittedly - hasn't been a lot.  But there was a side of Hoisin sauce that was delivered with the pho, so I used that to help with the overall flavor.  The one thing about it is that this was a large bowl of food for just $8.99, a great value from this small little Vietnamese restaurant.

We've now been to Saigon Bistro three or four times and while we're far from being Vietnamese food experts, the food is always good and flavorful.  And the amount of food we get versus the price is a great value.  The service we've had at Saigon Bistro has always been prompt and courteous, and they've always been accommodating to small requests.  While it's not fine dining, it's still a nice comfortable place to eat.     

Le Mekong - Moline, IL

My wife and I have been spreading our culinary wings in terms of trying more Vietnamese cuisine since we went on a guided tour of SE Asian restaurants in Chicago last fall.  (Click here to see that entry.)  It turns out that we have a longtime upscale Vietnamese restaurant in our own backyard - Le Mekong.  On a date night awhile back, we went over to Moline and had dinner at Le Mekong. 

As it says in the logo on the left, Le Mekong has been in existence since 1985.  But it was a long and treacherous route that founder Thom Van Pham took to open the restaurant over 30 years ago. 

Pham, his wife and three children were living in Saigon during the height of the Vietnam War.  He was working as an executive for a company that sold diesel engines and was also an importer for John Deere products.  When North Vietnamese troops started to get closer to Saigon in April of 1975, Pham felt it was time to get his family out of the country.  As they were waiting for a bus to take them to the airport, an artillery attack from North Vietnamese troops destroyed the terminal and airstrips at the main airport.  The siege of Saigon had begun and Pham was forced to turn around and go back home with his family.

Watching the North Vietnamese army enter the city from his third floor office a couple three days later, he knew that the end of the Vietnam War also meant a "re-education" of the citizens of South Vietnam into Communist ideologies.  Knowing that was not the path in life he wanted to take, he decided that he needed to escape the country.  But he also knew that he couldn't take his family with him. 

Two years after the fall of Saigon, Pham and his oldest daughter set out on a small fishing boat leaving his wife and two other children behind.  It was a harrowing trip over 12 days traversing the seas with only a small compass to keep them on course.  They finally ended up in Singapore before moving on to Paris.  In 1978, Pham's wife and their two other children made their way to Paris to meet up with the rest of the family. 

Pham still had friends back in the Quad Cities that he used to work with at John Deere and a number of co-workers went in and helped pay for the Pham family to come to the U.S. and live.  They settled in the Quad Cities where Pham started to work for John Deere International, as well as running his own import/export business.  Living in the Quad Cities for a few years, Pham saw that there was a need for a Vietnamese restaurant in the area. 

With his wife as the head cook of the restaurant, Le Mekong opened in 1985 as the very first Vietnamese restaurant in the Quad Cities.  It was a small place - it only sat 50 people - until the Pham's were able to take over a building next door to the restaurant and after a renovation to the space they added an additional 70 seats to the restaurant.  In 2001, they made another renovation to the building, adding more space and more seats and today Le Mekong comfortably sits over 200 people, including a space for receptions and large dinners. 

By 2007, Thom Van Pham was well into his 60's and he felt that he couldn't keep up with the restaurant any longer.  The 16 hour days, 7 days a week were taking a toll on him.  His son, Tony, was planning on going to college to get a degree in business, so he didn't want to take it over from his father.  The Pham family ended up selling the restaurant to a distant relative who ran a small eatery in a food court of a local mall.  They rented the space to the relative and continued to live above the restaurant. 

When the recession hit in 2008, business at Le Mekong went south.  The quality of the food suffered during the time the relative was running the business and it was obvious that it wasn't the same without Thom Van Pham at the helm.  Le Mekong ended up closing in January 2012 when the relative couldn't make a go of the place. 

Tony Pham was now out of college and back home.  He knew that he had to resurrect Le Mekong from the ashes, bring back he same quality of food and service that his father started nearly 30 years before.  After an extensive and lengthy remodeling of both the interior and the exterior of the restaurant, Tony Pham reopened Le Mekong with the help of his mother and father in January of 2013.  (Pictured right, Thom Van Pham and Tony Pham.  Photo courtesy Rock Island Dispatch-Argus.) 

We pulled up to Le Mekong along 5th Avenue in downtown Moline on a cold Monday evening.  (see map)  When we entered found a nice, clean open area with a small bar.  Just beyond the bar was a window that looked into the kitchen. 

Our waitress for the evening was a pleasant young lady who welcomed us to Le Mekong and guided us into the dining room.  It turns out we were the only people in the place, so we had our pick of tables to sit at.  Cindy picked out a table near a gas fireplace in the dining room to help take the chill off the cold evening.  Our server gave us a couple of menus and also took our drink order.  I got a Deschutes Mirror Pond pale ale that I was pleasantly surprise to see that they had on their menu, while Cindy got a glass of sauvignon blanc wine. 

We're both still trying to feel our way around a Vietnamese restaurant menu, but we pretty much have a better idea of what to look for after a couple three stops at Vietnamese restaurants since last fall.  Of course, they had pho - a staple of Vietnamese food - as well as chicken or shrimp curry dishes, stir-fried beef entrees, as well as chicken, pork and seafood selections. 

We started out getting a spring roll appetizer - shrimp, vermicelli, greens, and herbs wrapped in rice paper.  It came with a peanut plus sauce on the side.  The spring rolls were very fresh and very tasty.  The shrimp were plump and cool inside the wrap.  The peanut plum sauce was a great accompaniment to the spring rolls.

I was leaning toward getting the Ambassador Beef - stir-fried beef with bell peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, celery and onions.  But I ended up getting the beef pho with both the beef strips and the meat balls.  The meat balls were cut in half and the beef strips were the size of silver dollars.  Bean sprouts came on the side with a hoisin plum sauce.  The pho was packed with noodles and finished with chopped green onions.  It was very good - the meat balls packed a lot of flavor, the beef "strips" were tender, and the broth was a spot hitter on a cold evening.  There was a lot of it, too.  I ate what I could and ended up leaving about half the bowl full of broth. 

Cindy got the coconut basil chicken curry.  It featured strips of chicken along with baby carrots and baby potatoes, as well as tomatoes and bell peppers.  It was in a light coconut curry broth and rice came on the side.  She declared the dish to be "delicious".  About halfway through the meal, she said, "Why haven't we tried this before?"    

And the bottom line is that we will be back to Le Mekong.  The food was wonderful, the service was very good - we WERE the only people that dined in while we were there (there were a number of people who picked up to-go meals) - but our waitress was efficient and very attentive to our needs.  The decor was upscale, but we didn't feel like it was a snooty place at all.  Le Mekong is back on the track and I'm glad that we finally gave it a try. 

Uptown Pho - Chicago

During our Asian cultural and culinary tour in Chicago last fall, our guide, Judith Dunbar Hines from Walk Chicago Tours took us to an authentic Vietnamese restaurant.  (Click here to read about the tour.)  Now, my wife and I had never had Vietnamese food before and one of the reasons we wanted to take the tour with her was to learn more about Southeast Asian cuisine.  With a number of Vietnamese restaurants up and down Argyle Street, she picked Uptown Pho for our first foray into Vietnamese food, primarily because it's so well known for their diverse menu.  

Uptown Pho is located at 1010 W. Argyle, near Lake Michigan and between Foster Ave. and Lawrence Ave. (see map)  There was a lot of construction going on up and down Argyle when we were there and the only way into the restaurant was a makeshift gangplank to get into the building.

Uptown Pho is not very big, but it had sort of an elegant and cozy feeling to the place.  There was a small bar in the back corner and a number of four-seater tables throughout the place.  Even though there were five of us for lunch, we took a large eight-seater in the middle of the restaurant, mainly because we were going to be sharing food family-style.  

The first thing we learned was the correct pronunciation of "pho".  The Vietnamese pronunciation is "fuh", but it's been sort of Americanized to the phonetic "foe", which is also acceptable in some Vietnamese circles.  Even our friends Jay and Pam, who went on the tour with us and are very much familiar with Southeast Asian cuisine, pronounced it "foe".  

We were at the mercy of Judith to order for us.  She sets up the menu in advance with the restaurant depending upon how many people she has on the tour.  We ordered up drinks and I really didn't know what to get.  Someone ordered some bubble tea that was available in different flavors, another ordered some Da Chanh - fresh squeezed lemonade.  I almost went with that until Cindy saw that they had a drink called Ca Phe Sua Da - a Vietnamese iced-espresso served with condensed milk.  I got one of those.  I'm telling you, it was so packed with caffeine and sugar that I was crawling out of my skin up to an hour after I had the last drink.  

They began to bring out food once we sat down.  The first thing they sat down on the table was a Banh Mi Thit Nuong - basically a Vietnamese sandwich with a seasoned grilled pork and fresh greens on a baguette.  Judith held up a cut of the sandwich for me to take a cross-section picture of it.   The bread was fresh with a crunchy outer shell, but moist and chewy inside.  The seasoned pork had a bit of spiciness to it and was great on the bread.  

Because Vietnam was under French rule until 1954, many Vietnamese foods have a decidedly French influence.  That's why they have baguette breads and something else that was rather interesting - something called Banh Xeo, or Vietnamese crepes.  

They're basically made from rice flour and water with turmeric powder, sizzling and popping when the batter is poured onto a hot griddle.  The term Banh Xeo literally means "sizzling cake" in Vietnamese.  The Banh Xeo is then stuffed with pork or shrimp along with diced green onions and bean sprouts.  We had the shrimp Banh Xeo and it was very good.  Even Jay, who thought he'd had a firm grasp on many Vietnamese foods, was not familiar with Banh Xeo and he thought it was killer.  He added Hoisin and Sriracha sauce to the Banh Xeo to give it more of a flavorful boost, not that it really needed it in the first place.  

Another item that was on the table was the Lotus Stem Salad or Goi Ngo Sen.  Judith had shown us lotus stems at the Thai grocery store we had gone to earlier in the day and told us to remember that because we'd be having some later in the day.   It's made with daikon - which is basically a long white radish-type root vegetable - and pickled carrots.  Shrimp and/or pork is added to the salad.  We just had shrimp in the salad.  

Once we got those items out of the way, our server brought us out a huge bowl of pho.  This was Pho Tai Bo Vien - rice noodles with meatballs and sliced eye round steak.  Now, this is what I've been wanting to try, but didn't know anything about it, let alone how to order it.  

The pho featured a light broth filled with chopped onions and fresh herbs.  The eye round steak was tender and flavorful, but the winner of the dish were the excellent meat balls in the pho.  

Jay was very familiar with pho and he showed me that by putting a couple drops of Sriracha and some hoisin sauce in with the pho really gave it a wonderful overall flavor.  By the end of the day, I was wondering why on earth I'd never even thought about putting hoisin sauce on ANY type of Asian food.  Hell, I seriously considered getting some to try on just regular ol' steak that I cook on the grill.  

We weren't quite done at Uptown Pho, although I was pretty stuffed.  Judith whipped out a box full of Asian pastries that she had bought down the street at the Chiu Quon Bakery just before we went to Uptown Pho.  I tried a bite of a couple of things, but I was so full from what we had just eaten that I wasn't really able to enjoy anything that she brought in.  We've been on two cultural and culinary tours with Judith (we're going to do another one focusing on Indian foods next spring) and the one thing that you won't do on one of her tours is go away hungry.  She's acknowledged to us since then that maybe she feeds people too much food.  No, Jude!  Make your people walk away so stuffed that they'll remember the whole experience!  

For our first experience at a Vietnamese restaurant, I don't think we could have gone wrong with the food and experience at Uptown Pho.  We've since been to a couple Vietnamese restaurant fully knowing what to order and feeling confident as to what we like.  From the crepes to the banh mi sandwich and ending up with the steak and meatball pho, the food at Uptown Pho was a great education for a couple of Vietnamese food novices.  Thankfully we had a guide to help us through the maze of foods that were completely unknown to us.  But I'm sure the staff at Uptown Pho would help you navigate your way through their diverse menu if you stop in.  

The Argyle Culinary and Cultural Walking Tour - Chicago

Not long ago, my wife and I joined a friend of hers and her husband from Indianapolis in Chicago for a weekend.  The main goal was to take a culinary and cultural walking tour in the Argyle/North Broadway area in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago.  This area is a veritable melting pot of SE Asian and Chinese culture and cuisine.  My wife and I are not well-versed in Vietnamese food, but her friend and her husband were.  But they actually learned some things during the tour that they didn't know about some Asian foods.  It was a beautiful Fall Saturday when we did the tour in Chicago. 

We contracted the tour through Walk Chicago Tours, the same tour company that my wife and I took for the Pilsen tour of Mexican cuisine, culture and architecture last April. (Click here to read about that tour.)  Our host was once again the lovely and sassy Judith Dunbar Hines, pictured here from our tour in April.  We took the CTA Red Line train to the Argyle stop and met Judith about a block away at the corner of Argyle and Broadway.  (See map)  We were all a little early for our 10:30 a.m. appointment, but that didn't matter.  Judith was there waiting for us and we started on the tour earlier than planned.  

Judith told us the story of neighborhood with a decidedly non-Asian name of Argyle came to be the epicenter for Southeast Asian food and culture in Chicago.  The area was initially developed in the mid-1880's as a Chicago suburb.  Developer and Chicago Alderman James Campbell named the area for Scottish ancestors, the Dukes of Argyll.  The small village was annexed into Chicago in 1889.  

Southwest of the Chicago Loop, Chinese immigrants set up their own neighborhood of commerce in the early 1900's.  This neighborhood grew over the years under the watchful eyes of two organizations the Hip Song and On Leong associations, or "tongs".  Both organizations were competing with one another to help business people in the neighborhood and tensions came to a head in the 1960's.  That's when restaurateur Jimmy Wong, president of Hip Song Tong, decided to start looking for a "new" Chinatown.  

When an area of Chinatown was selected to be the new home of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in the early 70's, Wong and his associates knew they'd have to move many of their businesses.  While the On Leong Tong settled on an area that is the present day Chinatown south of downtown, Wong and Hip Song Tong bought up a good portion of a rundown neighborhood in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood centered primarily between Sheridan Road and N. Broadway.  Its close proximity to public transit was one of the big reasons for the move.  

Wong and Hip Song Tong provided financial assistance to Chinese-Americans looking to start businesses along Argyle St.  Not only did many Chinese businesses from around the city relocate to Argyle, but the group also persuaded a number of Chinese businessmen from around the nation to open branch stores in the neighborhood. 

Wong, who was sort of a local celebrity hobnobbing with movie stars and musicians at his eponymous restaurant, envisioned an area along Argyle Street with large pagodas, reflecting ponds and trees to beautify the run down area.  However, Wong broke both of his hips in 1974 and he had to retire, backing away from his dreams of development along Argyle.  The area languished in disrepair for five years.  That's when Charlie Soo entered the picture in 1979. 

Charlie Soo was the president of the Asian American Small Business Association and he took up Jimmy Wong's cause to make the Argyle neighborhood the "new" Chinatown.  Soo lobbied Chicago officials to fix the sidewalks and help with restorations of building fronts.  Soo also got the Chicago Transit Authority to have the Argyle "L" stop on the Red Line renovated and updated.  In 1981, Soo threw the first "Taste of Argyle" festival along Argyle St.  

As the Chinatown area centered at the corner of Wentworth and Cermak, Argyle became more of a Southeast Asian enclave with Thai, Laotian, Cambodian and predominantly Vietnamese immigrants settling in the neighborhood.  However, as Judith told us during her little talk of the history of the Argyle neighborhood, less than 40% of the population of the neighborhood is now of Asian descent.  "Kind of surprising," she told us.  "But it shows how the neighborhood has changed in diversity over the past number of years."  

Then Judith said, "OK, it's time for breakfast!"  

She led us down Broadway to the Sun Wah BBQ, a Hong Kong-style barbecue place that was originally on Argyle, but moved to N. Broadway when they had a chance to expand.  (see map) 

This is the kind of place where they have the barbecued ducks hanging in the window.  Our "breakfast" consisted of roasted duck slices in a Chinese bun with pickled vegetables and a bowl of seafood congee, a customary Chinese breakfast where the leftovers from the meal from the evening before - usually rice and whatever main dish (chicken, pork, seafood, etc.) - then it's all mixed together with a cream broth.  I'm going to do a separate entry on Sun Wah BBQ at a later date.  

From there, Judith took us to Tai Nam Food Market, an Asian grocery store that primarily caters to Thai cuisine.  (see map)  Before we went in, Judith had us pick from a number of paper tabs she pulled out of her purse.  We were going on a scavenger hunt in the store.  I picked palm sugar - a Thai sugar that is used not only in sweets, but in curries and sauces; Cindy got rice paper - primarily used for Vietnamese spring rolls; her friend Pam got Thai basil - which we found out has square stalks; and Pam's husband Jay picked tamarind paste which is used in a myriad of cuisines from Thai to Indian to Jamaican to Mexican foods.  It's also an important part of Worcestershire sauce.  However, it wasn't going to be a free-for-all scavenger hunt - Judith was going to sort of guide us to the areas we needed to look.

The Tai Nam market has been open since 1993 and is one of the leading places in the Chicago area to get Asian foods.  They feature over 10,000 items and is a full service grocery store with a meat department, seafood department, fresh produce, kitchen utensils and cookware, and locally made tofu.  (According to Judith, one of the best tofu manufacturers in the U.S. is located up the street on N. Broadway - Phoenix Bean - an artisan tofu factory owned by former United Airlines financial executive Jenny Yang.)   

Tai Nam is also a wholesaler to restaurants.  They had large sacks of dried mushrooms, peppers, peanuts and garlic.  I found a 40 lb. bag of cashews for $139.  Wow!  

They had a little bit of everything in the wholesale foods department.  Judith said that most of the restaurants in the area - and around Chicago - use Tai Nam for the basics of ethnic Asian foods.  But the rest of the market was designed for a person to make an authentic Asian meal at home.  

The meat department was a beehive of activity.  Judith told us that the butcher shop at Tai Nam was one of the best in all the Asian markets in Chicago.  "Not all of them are as clean as this one," she explained to us.  "I have no problem buying meat here because they're much more conscious about cleanliness here than at other places."  

As we were walking away from the meat department, Cindy turned to Judith and said, "Were those containers full of duck blood?"  She said that they were.  I missed them and asked Cindy where she saw them.  She told me to go back to the cooler opposite the meat case.  Judith told us that duck blood soup with vermicelli is a delicacy in parts of China.  The Vietnamese also have a soup called Tiet Canh Vit that is a Northern Vietnam variation of duck blood soup.  Nope - not anything I'd like to try, thank you.  

The seafood department at Tai Nam was better than some regular seafood shops I've been to in the past.  They had live lobsters and crabs in tanks toward the back of the store.  The crabs looked great and if we hadn't been traveling without a cooler (and staying that night in Chicago) I would have though hard about grabbing a couple to take home to steam.  

They had a long row of whole fish on ice - well over two dozen different varieties of fresh fish.  I was sort of amazed to see the fish displayed this way, but Judith said that it was nothing for Asians to take home a whole fish and use most of it in different types of dishes.  

The fresh produce aisle showed us a number of fruits - whole and cut - that were completely foreign to me.  We were greeted at the front of the store by a huge display of whole jackfruit with cut up jackfruit available in the produce section.  Interestingly, the produce didn't have much signage signifying what it was.  The produce aisle was also the place where Pam found her Thai basil.  Judith pointed out that a lot of Asian greens can look alike, but you need to look at the stalks to figure out what is what.  She pointed out the square stalks on the Thai basil to show the difference.  The things you learn in an Asian grocery store.

We were toward the back corner of the store looking at a number of kitchen utensils and cookware used in Asian homes.  As we were looking at a clay pot used for cooking outdoors, a guy and his wife walked by us.  He was Caucasian and she was Asian.  He asked, "Are you guys learning about Thai food?"  When we told him that we were, he said, "That's cool.  My wife had to teach me when we first got together and now that's about all we eat."  

His wife was showing us the techniques people use to cook food outdoors in the clay pots.  "The clay pots cook everything evenly," she said.  

Judith looked at her watch after a bit and said, "Oh, goodness!  We've spent a lot of time in here!  We have another stop before we go for lunch!"  

Our next stop was a Thai bakery on Argyle Street - Chiu Quon Bakery.  (see map)  I noticed some baked goods from Chiu Quon Bakery on the shelves at the Tai Nam Market.  Chiu Quon Bakery first opened over 25 years ago in Chinatown and opened a second location on Argyle about 15 years ago.  

The bakery, at first glance - looked like any other bakery in Chicago.  But a closer look saw that it was not your normal American bakery.  Baked goods such as Lotus Bean Paste Moon Cakes, Duck Egg Cake, and Sesame Cake Balls with Bean Paste were prominent in the case.  

What caught my eye were racks of baked buns with food baked into them.  Jay and I were both salivating over some of the offerings which included a ham and egg baked into the buns, along with hot dogs or Chinese sausage baked into the buns.  (Judith's description of Chinese sausage almost made me get one of those buns.  If we weren't going for lunch in a little bit, I would have done it.)  They also had a number of steamed buns with fillings such as pork and shrimp, barbecue pork, or sausage, egg and pork in a refrigerator for take home meals.  The thing about all these baked food buns - they were a buck each.  What a great deal!

Chiu Quon also had a few small tables for people to eat in the bakery.  On one of the tables in the back, one of the bakers had just set down two large trays of what looked like angel food cake in clay pots.  But Judith explained they were a type of bun, but fluffy in consistency.  I believe they also had food baked in with them, as well.  

Judith picked up a number of items for dessert after our meal and we took off down Argyle again.  Along the way she pointed out a number of murals on the walls of buildings, similar to the murals we saw when we did our walk through the Pilsen neighborhood.  Judith said that like the Mexican residents in Pilsen, Southeast Asians are also prolific when it comes to painting murals depicting historical events or ones that tell a story.  

The mural below left is named "The Roots of Argyle" depicting 100 years of Argyle Street starting from 1900 and starting out looking through the door of the old Essanay Studio that was housed on Argyle Street in the early 20th Century.  The studio was famous in its day for the silent movies it made with stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Ben Turpin, Gloria Swanson and Tom Mix.  There are six different portals in the mural depicting immigrants coming to America - six generations in total.  

The mural above right memorializes local hip-hop artist and poet John "Vietnam" Nguyen who tragically died in a drowning accident on a Wisconsin lake in 2012.  He helped save a friend from drowning while he was a student at the University of Wisconsin, but died in doing so.  To honor Nguyen, the City of Chicago named the 5000 block of N. Winthrop Ave. after him, the first Vietnamese-American so honored.  

Argyle Street was undergoing some major renovations with sidewalks and sewer lines being installed.  We ended up criss-crossing the street to avoid construction and ended up at a place Judith picked out because we told her we didn't know much - if any - about Vietnamese food when we went on our previous walking tour with her in the Spring.  We ended up having lunch at a place called Uptown Pho.  (see map)

Uptown Pho (pronounced "fuh" - we learned - although "foe" is also acceptable) is one of the more popular places along Argyle for Vietnamese food.  Judith told us that she had other options to take us to, but she felt that for our first true Vietnamese meal that Uptown Pho would be the best because of the diversity of foods on their menu.  

She had arranged with the owners beforehand with a set menu of foods to try including Beef Pho, Banh Xeo (a Vietnamese crepe - the French held Vietnam until 1954 and there's a lot of French influence in Vietnamese food), Banh Mi - a grilled pork sandwich, and a lotus stem salad.  Now, Jay and Pam thought they were pretty well-versed when it came to Vietnamese food.  But even Jay was stumped with some of the foods that Judith had ordered.  He's had Pho before, but the Banh Xeo and the Goi Ngo Sen - the lotus salad - surprised him.  He taught me that a dash of Sriracha and Hoisin sauce made the Pho jump to life.  

(I'm going to do an in-depth entry on Uptown Pho at a later date.  Let me just say that the Vietnamese coffee - thick and sweet - almost sent me out of my skin!)   

After the desserts from the bakery, we were over with our tour of the Argyle neighborhood.  Once again, Judith taught us so much about an area of Chicago that we weren't familiar with, but the double treat was that she turned us on to many great foods that we had no idea existed.  We're going to do another tour with Judith next Spring - it will probably be the tour that she does that centers on an Indian neighborhood and restaurants on the far north side.  Even though we like Indian food and have grown to know it pretty well, she said that an in-depth look at some of the Indian foods along Devon Ave. would broaden our horizons even more.  And that's what we're looking for - broadening our culinary horizons.