"Viet Cafe is a more interesting location that appearances might initially give. Run by Sonia and her friend Donna, one of Viet Cafe’s first employees who has just stayed for the last 10 years, it has mostly been pigeonholed as a bánh mì and sandwich joint, quickly filling up the workers and visitors of Kings College Hospital. In reality, the cafe specialises in that much broader category: things on rice. Grilled beef or pork are well marinated and tender, coming with the kiss of char from the grill, and might form a rice bowl with a fried egg and some chilli, or a tangle of steamed bun noodles with bouncy meatballs, salad and fish sauce. Better yet, is the bò kho, a Vietnamese beef stew redolent of good home cooking: tender brisket offering no resistance to a plastic spoon, with thick batons of carrot glistening with fat and greedily sucking up all the slow-cooked flavour from the meat, proving the cross-cultural truth that the best part of long meat cooking is the starchy vegetables. On Friday night, Sonia prepares phở for Saturday morning until it sells out. It is an outstanding version: blushing rare beef that gently loses its shame in the soup, darker pieces of well done meat, and homemade meatballs, all in a sweet, southern style broth. The North vs South debate doesn’t really matter: good phở is good phở." - Jonathan Nunn
