Restaurant Review: Mr. Red Cafe

MR. RED CAFE

2680 West Broadway ~ mrredcafe.com Instagram: @mrredcafe_vancouver Co-Diner: Tim Golem

When you think of Vietnamese cuisine, two main dishes come to mind: phở and bánh mì. While completely delicious, both of these dishes fall into a bit of a “fast food” category as far as Vietnamese food goes. But what else is there? I was hoping to find out at Mr. Red Cafe in Kitsilano, one of their two locations in Vancouver. They were voted Best Vietnamese 2016 and Best Vietnamese 2017 in Vancouver Magazine, and so they seemed like a good bet.

We visited on a Friday evening and were seated right away by the friendly staff. The inside of the restaurant is very cute!! I absolutely love the tropical “cabana” style, with dried palm leaves as far as the eye can see. The walls are painted red, which makes a lot of sense, given the restaurant's name. The intricate decor totally embodies the Northern Vietnamese vibe, which matches perfectly with their food. We were immediately served a delicious warm tea, although they never returned to refill our cups. I had also wanted to enjoy an avocado smoothie, but was informed that they didn’t have any left.

The menu is quite extensive and includes both phở and bánh mì, of course. Thankfully there is a lot more to choose from as well. We gravitated right away to the Family Set Menu for two people, which sounded exactly like everything that we wanted and included eight different dishes. To our dismay, we were informed that this meal is only offered on Saturday and Sunday. So we were back to the drawing board and began to cobble together our dinner à la carte. Once ordered, every dish arrived to our table very quickly.

From the appetizer section we chose the Nộm Đu Đủ Bò Khô ($9.00), a favourite Southeast Asian dish of ours.

Green papaya salad mixed with shredded carrots, assorted herbs, beef jerky, crushed peanuts & fried shallots. Served with sweet & sour fish sauce dressing.

I liked this dish because it was somewhat different from its Thai counterpart, albeit a bit less flavourful. The green papaya and carrot tasted fresh but didn’t have a whole lot of flavour, however the zesty dressing counteracted that a bit. I really enjoyed the unexpected leaves of mint, the crunchy peanuts, and the crispy shallots, which all added interesting elements and textures. Best of all was the beef jerky, something that I have not seen on this type of salad before. Salty and savoury, the jerky elevated this salad quite a lot.

We tried to order the Bánh Mì Cay (spicy bread sticks with pate spread & crunchy shallots) because in my opinion, the pate is the best part of a bánh mì. But we were told that they were all out of bread and that they could not make this. At this point I was feeling pretty unimpressed at the amount of items that we were unable to order. We had the Nem Cua Bể ($9.00), which also sounded good.

Deep-fried pork & real crab meat spring rolls. Served in 3 pieces with light fish sauce and fresh herbs.

These were very good and better then your typical spring roll. I liked that they truly seemed homemade. The pork and crab were pretty indiscernible, but the rolls were fried to a golden perfection. Each bite was piping hot and delicious thanks to the tart fish sauce.

Finally, for my main course, I tried to order something a bit more traditional. I went to the “Dried Rice Vermicelli with "Nuoc Mam” section of the menu and picked the Bún Chả Hà Nội ($13.00).

Grilled pork belly & pork meat balls in sweet & sour fish sauce. Served with vermicelli noodles & fresh herbs.

Served in the more traditional way, this bún (rice vermicelli) is more of a do-it-yourself endeavour. It’s up to you to combine the various elements on your plate to create your perfect bites. I enjoyed the flavours and textures of this dish quite a lot. I spent a lot of time dragging my noodles through the vinegary fish sauce and grabbing little bits of everything else, trying to rotate though all of it. The noodles themselves were a bit sticky, but once bathed in the sharp broth they loosened up quite a lot. The pork belly was different and interesting, because it was a lot more like a jerky, which I actually liked! The meat was spicy and toothsome and worked very well with all of the other components. The menu states that there are meat balls in this dish, however I only received one. I also really liked the pickled vegetables that were included, which added a lot of flavour. A decently good dish!

My experience at Mr. Red Cafe was generally good, and I did enjoy the food and the ambiance. However, I was let down by the amount of items on the menu that couldn’t be ordered. I would hope that this isn’t always the case!