Let me start this post by saying WE LOVE Vietnamese food. If I had to be stuck on an island and could only eat one type of food, it would be Vietnamese. I love its diversity of flavours – tangy, spicy, sweet, an indescribable mashup of lemon grass, anise and a myriad of other flavors paired with a wonderful freshness – crunchy carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, etc. Anyone I meet who has Vietnamese ancestry, I ask them what their favorite Vietnamese restaurant is in Toronto – so I’ve tried a lot of restaurants all over the GTA, and I can as Vietnamese food is relatively inexpensive. I’m more impressed by a cook and make something fantastic for a little money than a chef you can make food for a lot of money – which, I ask you, is the greater art form.
Huong Viet
| 1750 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto | View on Google Maps |
There is a lot of regional variation to Vietnamese food, so I usually end up going one place for one kind of food and different place for another kind of food. What keeps us coming back to the place profiled here, Huong Viet, 1750 St. Clair Avenue West, is soup #27 beef stew with rice noodles soup. It is soup with a rich and complex broth with tasty chunks of beef and carrots, with plentiful rice noodles. It also does cold rolls, regular pho and bun well too, which makes in all around good restaurant in our books.
Tonkin Vietnamese
| 2404 Dufferin Street, Toronto | View on Google Maps |
We recently, quite by accident, happened on a new Vietnamese restaurant, Tonkin Vietnamese located at 2404 Dufferin Street (Eglinton West & Dufferin). It is located in the spot of a favorite Thai restaurant of ours that closed down. Tonkin is unique in that it features northern Vietnamese food. The bulk of the Vietnamese restaurants in Toronto feature south Vietnamese food. The only other restaurant we know of with northern Vietnamese food is Pho Son located at 2422 St. Clair Ave. West. https://www.facebook.com/phoson2422
What, you may be asking, differentiates southern from northern Vietnamese food. Like many other types of food from the same country, the difference can be found the slight variations in spicing and thus flavors. One famous feature of northern cuisine is bún chả. Bún chả is a noodle dish composed of grilled pork, a variety of greens (usually lettuces), and a broth which you combine together to your liking. We have only found this dish at Tonkin and Pho Son. Another thing that differentiates this restaurant are its unique and tasty salads. We tried the Chicken Salad and the Rice Noodle Beef Bowl, which were both delicious and make for a lovely summer meal. It is worth a visit to Tonkin, just for the Chicken Salad. The chefs are a mother/son team. Our server, who is the daughter/sister, said that her mom tends to cook traditional northern Vietnamese food while her brother likes to experiment more. This can be seen by a variety of fusion dishes and the addition of flavors more prominent in other types of Asian food. We have visited Tonkin more than once and certainly have plans to go back.