Pho Flinders

I’ve been here twice on visits to Melbourne CBD and have enjoyed both visits. The girl and I shared phở with beef and phở with rare beef and brisket — not equally quality. The trick is not to overload the bowl with fish sauce or hot sauce. Noodles are clean and delicious, as is the broth. Plenty large portion for $ 10. Next time, I’ll dip into the banh bao.

Stumbled across this place almost by accident whilst walking down Elizabeth Street. I’m not sure if there are more, but this Phở Flinders is located on Elizabeth Street and not Flinders Street as the same might suggest.
Phở here goes for around $ 10. Choose between 3 different types of meat or vegetable dishes to add to your Phở, On my visit I went for Beef Brisket, Veggies and rare beef.
All in all the food wasn’t too bad. I must admit I have had better, but I would go back again and give it another try.

Phở is probably the hardest food to review. You can’t really compare it to the one next door or in another suburb. As there is not one place that uses the same identical ingredient for their broth. So it all comes down to a personal taste.
The taste didn’t really tango with my taste buds. The broth was more acidic and sour sweet. The rare slice beef that I had was too thick for my liking. It’s usually should be thinner. but for $ 10 med size bowl it had more meat then most places I have been to. At least the basil mint (I think) was fresh. Not showing any black marking on them.
I might try their broken rice next time and hopefully it will make me happy.

For team lunch we tried the newest Phở place, which happened to be a grand total of 74 steps from our office door. Sitting in the old Cajun Kitchen site, this feels it’s opened very quickly.
It’s still got half the feel of cajun kitchen but with some vietnamese hats on the wall. Decoration isn’t their strong suit. Moving on…
Honestly, not the best phở I’ve had. The portions were generous enough on liquid but fillings wise (tofu, chicken ect) I was left wanting more.
Needed to use a lot of sauce and chilli to get some flavour going.
Maybe things will get better as they’ve been opened a little longer and their master phở develops more. I sure hope so. I’ll give them another crack in a few weeks to see how things improve.