DA NANG, ALBANY

For Vietnamese, we normally go to the pho place in Ranch 99. It's pretty decent and cheap and quick. But one evening, I felt that we should try out a new place, and decided to check out Da Nang, a Vietnamese restaurant pretty close to our house. Now a while ago, my cousin had warned me not to go to this place. Apparenly she and her husband had gone there a long time ago, and had a bad meal there. I maybe should've heeded the warning more, since they're a lot less pickier than I am when it comes to food, but I had read views online that said that new management had taken over and that the food was much better now. So we headed over and decided to give it a try.

When we arrived, there were a few people present. It had pretty simple decorations, and I liked the planters of lucky bamboo running down the middle of the restaurant:When we were handed the menus, it was clear that we were off to a poor start. The restaurant serves a mix of Vietnamese and Thai food. They had the Vietnamese dishes, but the focus was clearly more on the Thai stuff. That's always a warning, when a restaurant takes two distinctive Asian cusinese and thinks it can lump them together and come out with something good. I tend to avoid such places. But we were there, so I put in an order for some summer rolls:
These were OK. I guess when you're making summer rolls, the components are so simple that you really need to use super fresh, yummy stuff. That was not the case here. The veggies weren't overly fresh and the dipping sauce wasn't very good, either. Just kinda tasteless and forgettable. It certainly didn't add much to the rolls.

I had also ordered the Vietnamese classic: pho. The thing that bothered me was that it wasn't even called pho on the menu. They had all these different dishes, and I couldn't really identify was just a bowl of chicken pho- I finally just asked the waiter if they had it, and this is what they brought:
So this wasn't really the best pho I've ever had. The noodles stuck together, the broth tasted kinda strange and worst of all, the chicken tasted as if it had gone bad. Like, you know when you smell raw chicken and it has that slightly rotting flavor so you know it's bad? The chicken in my bowl had that flavor. I ended up picking our all the chicken cause I didn't want to get sick, and dousing the damn thing in hot sauce so I could mask the flavor of the broth.

So overall, it wasn't a great trip to Da Nang. We'll be sticking closer to home, with trips to the Ranch 99. I guess you just gotta go where all the other Asians go.