Some hot dining spots seem to expand almost the moment they open, but east London’s Vietnamese stalwart Sông Quê has waited almost 25 years to spawn a little sister, Sông Quê Phở Bar. The new offshoot sits on Commercial Street, a mile or so down the road, and serves a tiny menu focusing on phở, as well as a smattering of the original cafe’s small plates in the form of summer rolls, green papaya salad, grilled lamb chops and savoury banh khot cupcakes.
Quite why Sông Quê, with its regular weekend queues and well-known name, took so long to branch out, however, is unknown. Still, why rush things? After all, the road to restaurant ruin is paved with premature brand roll-outs, and even if managers think they’re superhuman, they cannot be in two – or three or four – sites all at the same time. Plus, the big question with an institution such as the OG Sông Quê is: can you really recreate the magic elsewhere?
‘Loads of fresh herbs’: Sông Quê Phở Bar’s grilled lemongrass prawn bun bowl.
The new phở bar has appeared in what at a glance seems a pretty good location, almost directly opposite the much-adored (not least by me) Xian Biang Biang Noodles (go for the belt noodles, I implore you), and close to the beloved Thai hotspot Som Saa. It’s also just down the road from somewhere called Slurp Thai, but the less said about that name, the better.
But is it a good location? The Spitalfields margins, in that sort-of-Aldgate and close-to-Shoreditch area, can be curiously hard to lure passing trade into, so, if I’m honest, I’m actually not so sure. Lauded fish chef Tom Brown opened The Pearly Queen on this very site only a couple of years ago, and that vanished pretty rapidly, and before that it was a Turkish spot called The Space, which made no impact on the London dining scene at all.
Sông Quê Phở Bar’s beef in betel leaves: ‘This place does not skimp on its garnishes.’
One Sunday earlier this month, it was also a bit of a concern to find ourselves the only customers at the new phở bar. Beforehand, I’d worried about not having booked a table, only to find we had the pick of the whole restaurant, and on both floors, too. Still, the staff were bright and chipper, and young enough to tell me, in tones that suggested they were talking about medieval times, that the original Sông Quê opened in 2002; they also seemed genuinely surprised that we had working stoves and electricity way back then. The new place, however, feels more like a canteen that’s there to do one job well: pop by for a bowl of their beef broth noodle soup topped with a choice of beef, beef balls, chicken, prawns or tofu.
My rare beef flank phở came thinly sliced, blushingly pink and generously served atop a bowl of thin, al dente noodles and a fistful of chopped spring onion, and all of it drowned in a very meaningful broth. Star anise is a shining light in this rich, sweet, warmly spiced soup. They also do their famous bun bo hue, which is slightly different from the phở in that it features well done beef flank and pork sausage, or spicy prawns or tofu, and is served with loads of fresh herbs. And if the idea of soup noodles leaves you cold, there’s also a grilled lemongrass chicken and vermicelli dish with gloriously fiery chicken thigh.
Sông Quê Phở Bar’s phở comes ‘in a very meaningful broth’.
Those small plates shouldn’t be ignored, either, so we didn’t. We galloped through grilled beef wrapped in betel leaves, scattered with handfuls of chunky peanuts, dressed with a semi-hedgerow of fresh mint and dunked in a hot, sweet dipping sauce. This place does not skimp on its garnishes. We moved on to little juicy bullets of spicy tempura squid flanked by raw chilli, and a serving of those grilled lamb chops that look like nothing much but that have a truly gorgeous char and come with an oddly unobtrusive, vinegar-based dipping sauce that has just the right amount of sharpness to carry the heft of the meat.
It was at this point in the meal – roughly around the time I was devouring those cute little prawn cupcakes that are in fact little more than egg and cornflour moulded into little baskets, but that are jolly nice when dipped in something spicy and sweet – that I began to think: “Where the hell is everyone?” This is a jolly handy little spot, and there’s no way it can survive on midweek office workers alone while losing out at weekends to the likes of Slurp Thai simply because that’s a few blocks closer to Shoreditch’s main drag.
This is one of those places where I say: use it or lose it. Right now, they have seats going, so take a friend, or a book, and settle down to the best phở in town. What’s more, if you’re antisocial and like Vietnamese treats, well, right now, Sông Quê will feel like heaven.
Sông Quê Phở Bar 44 Commercial Street, London E1, 020-4585 0341. Open all week, 11.30am-9.30pm. From about £25 a head, plus drinks & service