Mekong

Update: Mekong is closed.

In a word: Something less than a barrel of monkeys.

The specs: #0376
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at QSC, Yelp, Christopher Robin's Fresh Foods.

Clint ate the chicken chow foon.
JM ate the pork pad thai.
Nichole ate the pho ga with a glass of house wine.
Tiffany ate the shrimp curry soup with a Thai iced tea.
We split an order of larp.
The bill was about $60, or $15/person, plus tip.
Clint, Nichole and Tiffany gave Mekong a B; JM gave Mekong a B+ (see our grading rubric).

Latest Mekong news and reviews

Nichole and Tiffany planned to see a play later in the evening for Nichole’s birthday.  Each gal brought her fella and we all had dinner at Mekong.

The beef larp was presented as an appetizer sans sticky rice and called "beef salad" on the menu. Its predominant flavor was lime. The dish was served at room temperature, with tender beef, fresh turnips and beansprouts, and superfluous but pretty iceberg lettuce.

Tiffany's curry soup was truly soup, with a brothy consistency rather than a sauce. She said the flavor was just OK.

JM’s pork pad thai had a really good noodle base. The pork picked up a lot of the seasoning and the bean sprouts were crunchy if not the freshest he’s ever had. That said, it was far from what JM would consider his ideal pad thai. It doesn’t help that his very manhood was questioned by the server since he ordered the pad thai mild.  The waitress’ response: "Chicken!" Ouch!

Clint’s chicken chow foon was loaded with meat. That's more than we can say of the broccoli content, which was mostly stems and nary a floret. Broccoli without florets, we all agreed, defeats much of the point of broccoli. The dish retained its heat well. The sauce had a good flavor, and the noodles were cooked perfectly.

The chicken pho came in its customary size (basically a tureen). The chicken was tender, the noodles plentiful, and the garnishes (bean sprouts and cilantro) fresh, but the broth tasted mostly of garlic and had fewer of the subtler overtones that pho is best at. Then again, maybe Nichole's tastebuds had been dulled by the blah house wine.

By the end of the meal we were in a bit of a rush to move on to our next activity, which made the normal-to-leisurely pace of the service feel painfully protracted. While we wouldn’t rank Mekong way up there in our favorite Viet-Thai places, there may be a some combination of meat and preparation in the menu that truly becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Comments

[Eric]

Mekong is kind of "eh" overall. That said, you'll have much better luck there if you stick to vietnamese entrees and avoid their thai stuff. Their vietnamese steamed fish is quite delicious, though. Their pho is mediocre, but beef pho is usually a better dish to judge overall pho quality than pho ga.

Saigon Noodle on Odana has a better pho, although it's not entirely oustanding either (but you can get it with tripe and tendon, which is quite tasty).

[Kyle]

"Pho" is just a cool dish for having a name rife for sophomoric humor. I hear there's a "Pho King" in Oakland, CA.

"Pho Queue" another prime cut that someone should really get a jump on.