Pho All Seasons, Especially Spring!

Pho All Seasons, Des Moines

On Friday, me, my brother and my mom went to Pho All Seaons, a Vietnamese restaurant that we had never been to before. It turned out to be a very good restaurant serving great appetizers, such as pot stickers and calamari.

I ate three of the pot stickers. They were so good! A pot sticker is like a noodle shell with meat and vegetables on the inside. It feels smooth and it's not crunchy.

Here I am by my meal. I got the Korean short ribs. And they tasted really, really good! Part of that was the sauce on the ribs that made it taste good. It was kind of sweet, tangy and it was a little bit spicy. At a barbecue restaurant, the ribs are like baby back ribs -- you get the entire rib bone. But at this restaurant, they cut the ribs differently so each piece of rib had just a little bone circle and the rest was meat. 

 The other things on my plate was a salad, which was sweet. It had carrots and zuchinni cut really thin. There was also rice. And in this bowl was a spicy sauce that went good with the calamari that my brother ordered.

 The restaurant is a smaller restaurant. It was authentic with cool lights from the ceiling. It was pretty busy on a Friday night. Many people were ordering big bowls of soup, like the one that my mom got.

My mom ordered the pho soup that had brisket, noodles, green onions and broth. It was served with a plate of fresh basil, sprouts and a lime wedge. When I tried it, it tasted good with the noodles and the broth. But I was not a huge fan after eating lots of spoonfuls of just the broth. The meat tasted a lot like roast beef and I really liked it. I think the addition of the fresh vegetables made that soup taste fresher and better than other soups.

My brother wasn't that hungry so he just ordered an appetizer of calamari for his meal. Calamari is squid breaded and fried. I like it because it has a unique taste that I think is really good. I'm not a huge fan of raw calamari with no breading because it's really rubbery and chewy. This calamari tasted tender and not really chewy. It was served with a sweet sauce, and fried onions and carrots. The calamari tasted great! It was one of the best I've had. 

We will go to Pho All Seasons more often now that we know it is a good restaurant. I recommend it!

Rice Party

Today I was in Nevada. Me and my dad were thinking about going to Mayhem, the comic book store, and we were thinking about having lunch, so we walked around a little bit. And we found a place called Rice House. It was a new restaurant, and it was a Korean restaurant. We got it to go.

I ordered kimchi fried rice, and my dad got bibimbop. We also got dumplings. My fried rice had pickled cabbage; it sounds weird but it was pretty good. It also had an egg and some fish squares. The pickled cabbages tasted sour and they were crunchy because that’s what pickles and cabbage are like. The fish squares were kind of chewy like rubber and they tasted like fish (I don’t know what fish tastes like, really). They tasted sort of…meaty? Kind of?

I tried my dad’s bibimbop. It was pretty good, and it was a teeny bit spicy. Just a teeny bit, because of the sauce. If you’re wondering why the picture looks weird, the rice came in a different box, so that’s why.

The dumplings tasted like they had some sort of meat inside. I forgot what kind. They were not very crunchy, but they were good. Even without the soy sauce. There were also some vegetables inside of it. Even though I can’t remember what meat and vegetables they had inside it, they tasted pretty good, still.

If you want to try the bibimbop, if you get too much hot sauce it will make your tongue hurt, so don’t get too much hot sauce. Rice House is a good restaurant. You should go there sometime, but don’t get too much food because a sign there said, “Get sides that you can eat, do not waste food,” so don’t get too much food. Just get the right amount, that’s my advice for you.

From the Archives: Korean Foods Are Interesting

Originally published March 20, 2012

Today I went to The Scallion Korean restaurant in Ames, Iowa, with my dad Shawn. The restaurant was a street restaurant, not very fancy. But when you go inside it is very fancy -- it's clean, it's colorful and small. We both ordered the bi bim bop.

Bi bim bop is a mix of rice, vegetables and meat. Sometimes it has sauce in it. The sauce makes it very good. It was in a very hot bowl -- I couldn't touch it because it was super hot. I touched it once and it burnt my hands. The rice goes in on the bottom, the vegetables go next. There was zucchini, seaweed, carrots, bean sprouts. And then pork. That was the only kind of meat. And then an egg goes on top. It wasn't scrambled, it was like the white on the outside and yellow on the in part. You're supposed to stir it up so you don't have to take big bite. I tried the spicy red sauce. I didn't like it because it kind of tasted bitter and hot, and the flavor I didn't like. The bi bim bop was good. It was so colorful and it was a mix of funky flavors and that's why it was great.

 

 

We also got dumplings. The dumplings came with soy sauce. The dumplings had a wonton wrapper. A wonton wrapper is like a crunchy kind of good food. It was fried to make it crunchy. They put vegetables and meat inside the wonton. They tasted great with the soy sauce on them. Four came in the order. They were big. I ate three and Shawn ate one.

Restaurant rating: Thumbs Up!

You should go to Ames, Iowa, to The Scallion and try the bi bim bop and the dumplings.