Cô Hai Bánh Mì, Beach Road

Came to know of this Vietnamese (359 Beach Road, tel : +65 6291 6435) joint recently. They're located near to Mrs Pho.

There's soursop smoothie on the menu. Chilled, sweet and citrus-y. Just the thing for our climate.

We ordered a gỏi xoài (mango salad). How the salad looked reminded me of the goi du du from Moc Quan. For a moment, I was a little wary but it turned out to be delicious. You know - the salty fish sauce with a bit of sweetness and citrus tang coupled with fresh crunch kind of delicious. There was also something that tasted like laksa leaves. Pretty sure they were those.

They had a variety of banh mi on the menu so we tried their bánh mì cô hai. There was pork belly, some sausages, ham and pate. Sans cilantro/coriander of course. I thought it was ok. Tasted pretty much like how it looked. I had expected to be more impressed since banh mi was in the name of the restaurant. 

We got their fried banana spring rolls because we've never had them before and were curious.

I'm very often biased against cooked bananas that aren't of the pisang raja variety. This wasn't. Hence the lack of pisang raja's brand of balance between the tanginess and sweet. The bananas they used were just sweeter. Definitely didn't need all that maple syrup that they had drizzled over the spring rolls.

This was called xôi thập cẩm. Sticky rice with shredded chicken, ham, something like lup cheong, meat floss and a couple of quail eggs topped with peanuts and sesame seeds. I liked this. I couldn't identify the flavour in the sticky rice but it was pleasant and almost like chicken rice.

There's a pretty good cháo gà (chicken porridge) on menu as well. It's light on the rice and more on the broth which was lightweight yet increasingly addictive after each spoonful. This one had laksa leaves as well.