Growing up, I was always that guy. You know the one - the fussy eater. The one who would go to a Chinese restaurant and order the chips. The one who would look at a korma and say 'hmm, that's a bit spicy for me'.
So in a way, in a weird 'look for the silver linings' way, my diagnosis of Coeliac disease (the one that makes bread and bran flakes destroy my intestines), was sort of a blessing. Faced with the choice between starving, getting cancer and eating Vietnamese food, it turns out I actually do in fact, like Vietnamese food.
Enter Pho. The Trinity Kitchen eatery is certified Coeliac safe by the Coeliac Society UK. This means it's literally been tested and guaranteed to be safe for people with wheat induced gut rot like me, and anyone else that may go a bit funny at the taste of the world's most popular grain.
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I always think the measure of successful gluten free food is that it doesn't look, taste, smell or appear to be gluten free food in any way. If it tastes gluten free, you've failed, because gluten free food tastes (mostly) awful. But Pho doesn't. Pho looks normal. It tastes normal. You could take the kind of person who thinks GF food is for freaks with bleeding stomachs here and they'd never even know.
Pho offers a range of authentic Vietnamese food. If you've never had Vietnamese, it's basically lots of grilled or boiled meats served on light beds of noodles or rice and vegetables, or mixed into very healthy looking soups. It probably isn't as healthy as it looks thanks to things like oil, but it *looks* green and lush and bursting with vitamins, so I definitely feel less guilty than wolfing down a KFC.
I ordered a starter of chicken wings - which are basically mini KFC wings, albeit very salty - some prawn crackers, and a side of ginger lemonade. Then myself and my girlfriend split a beef broth and some wok fried chicken noodles.
The beef broth is essentially a clear soup with flat noodles boiled in, alongside chunks of soft, melt in your mouth beef brisket. It's excellent.
The wok fried noodles were very tasty too. Chunks of unbreaded white chicken sit in a bed of fried noodles, bean sprouts, and various other green things, and it makes for a great balance between tasty meat and light, crunchy veg. Topped with a fried egg (available on request - I thoroughly recommend it) and sprinkled with peanuts. The only thing I wasn't sure about was the £1.25 charge for extra veg for the soup, which was basically a handful of bean sprouts and some parsley for £1.25. In these financially straitened times, that felt a bit tight.
The aforementioned chicken wings were perhaps a touch salty and my girlfriend said the beetroot smoothie 'tastes like garden', but on the whole, it was all very tasty, very satisfying, and a million miles away from your standard 'chips and burger' street food fare. Trinity Kitchen definitely has a great restaurant here, and it's good value at £38 for two mains, two starters and three drinks.
Pho has made a friend of a former fussy eater, and it's definitely worth a try no matter what your culinary hang ups (or diseases).
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