If anyone thought that the name Hoàng Hâu might sound familiar, it's the word for 'empress' in Vietnamese which also sounds similar to how the Chinese addressed their empresses as 皇后. The restaurant is at the foot of the block (#01-1090, 146 Jalan Bukit Merah, tel : +65 9622 1077) facing the side of Wat Ananda Metyarama Thai Buddhist Temple.
Salted lemonade with mint.
The talked about dish from Hoàng Hâu is their freshwater eel porridge which the proprietor mentioned many people order as an appetizer. It was pretty good tasting with intense flavours. The spiced creamy porridge bowl laden with strips of eel was savoury with some sweetness and also quite peppery. I identified something that tasted like laksa leaf in there. It would be remiss of me if I did not also mention that there wasn't any muddy taste from freshwater eel.
Pretty fresh tasting grilled prawns that were easily stripped off their shells. There was a sweet/spicy glaze but I couldn't tell what it was.
We ordered a couple of gỏi cuốn and chả giò. The summer rolls were thick with vermicelli, sliced pork and prawns. I had imagined that there would be herbs like mint/basil but there were only lettuce which kinda made them less satisfying.
Surprised by their chả giò which also featured stuffings of vermicelli along with porcine bits of finely minced meat with pepper under the crispy fried skin. Tasted better than I had imagined.
We wanted more food and were originally gunning for their grilled ribeye but it was sold out by the time we ordered. So we fell onto the second choice which was grilled catfish which also happened to be finished for the day. Tried ordering their ham and pâté banh mi but they couldn't do it because they had problems getting the ham in. So that's how we ended up with the sandwich that had grilled pork and meatball.
I liked the soft airy bread but the meats were more sweet than salty and there weren't much pickles cut through the sweetness. On top of that, there's even more sweet from chilli sauce and mayo which reminded me much of roti john. Don't think I'm a fan of their banh mi.
The drip coffee's good though.
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