Pho Pho Pho! A Christmas Treat!

Well this is an interesting one. I’m hardly a diplomatic journalist but for the first time, blogging about allergy management has thrown up a potential conflict of interest! Let me explain…

You may have seen my previous post about eating at Pho in Oxford.  I really enjoyed the food but we had a slightly mixed experience in terms of ease of ordering. They didn’t serve anything with our allergens in, which has to be the most important metric, but I was a bit disappointed and said I wouldn’t rush to bring the family back.

I tagged Pho on the blog post when I shared it on social media. Understandably they were disappointed to hear that I wasn’t particularly satisfied. I think they felt I might have caught them on a bad day and were keen to show that they could deliver good service. One of their social media managers got in contact with me and, having read the blog post, said they would like to ask us to come back and see if we have a better experience. They were open about the idea that they still have work to do. They took pride in their managing of allergies in the kitchen but admitted that they’re still working on having a high quality customer-facing allergen menu. I.e. they have all the allergen information well documented in their restaurants – they just struggle with the communication; something that matched my experience.

As a result I am writing to review a meal that I was given free of charge for having previously given a ‘bad’ review. Talk about negative operant conditioning!

It took a while to be back in vicinity of a Pho restaurant and, in the end, a scheduled trip back to Oxford to do the bulk of our Christmas shopping turned out to be the perfect opportunity to take them up on their offer. What they were offering wasn’t made crystal clear. They were clearly offering to feed us but there was no talk of a budget or terms and so I decided to just go in with blind ignorance, order as I would have been happy to do with no subsidisation, and see what happened when we came to settle the bill.

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We’d booked in for lunch (we were collecting Piglet back up from Nursery at the end of the day) as so walked in to a 12:30 booking not knowing whether they would know the nature of our visit. On arrival, it was clear that they’d been pre-warned about us coming. We were the only lunchtime booking that day and they knew who were were without looking at the diary. They were very friendly but not beyond the realms of just decent customer service and we were dealt with 3 different waiters/waitresses over the course of the meal so it clearly wasn’t just a manager keeping us wrapped in cotton wool.

They gave us the allergy matrix and left us to happily cross check the range of tasty looking options with our list of possibilities. Interestingly the allergy matrix stated ‘for staff use only’ and you could tell it was more an internal document than a marketing piece. But actually, the content was great and gave a fantastic deal of information about what was suitable. Vietnamese food uses quite a lot of soya so many of the items weren’t suitable (as we’d expected) but the matrix quite clearly stated which meals could be adjusted to be acceptable. The matrix also covered ingredients that are outside the registered 14 allergens, for example ginger and onion. For many people that might sound an unnecessary level of detail but actually my mother in law will pretty much choose where to eat on the probability of avoiding garlic – possibly missing much of the Asian food she would otherwise love. To know that I could take her out for a Vietnamese meal and guarantee her no garlic is a selling point in its own right!

There was even a breakdown of the key components of certain items so that my wife was able to effectively order a hybrid of two of the Pho dishes meaning she could have the suitable broth from the vegetarian option with the chicken main ingredients from another. I can see why Pho might think that their matrix isn’t really a customer facing allergen menu but actually we’re very used to seeing similar documents in a range of other restaurants that we regularly eat in and are quite happy to have that level of detail. Sure, it means it can take a little while to order but anyone who’s used to ordering from allergen menus is used to that and it’s actually much easier and less stressful than trying to hold 3 different potential options in your mind while you discuss which items are suitable with a knowledgeable waiter and then go back and forth with different possibilities as they check. Not that I’m saying this matrix took the place of an informed waiter. Ideally you have both and the person serving us was great at also knowing what we could have.

To my surprise we were able to have two different types of spring roll starters without substitutions. I ordered a chicken curry with broken rice as a main and my wife ordered a chicken green pho (by asking to make a slight hybrid of two of the options). We also had a spicy lemonade and coconut water with a touch of pineapple plus a bottle of beer to share (what the hell…).

One of the reasons I’ve been so transparent about the background for why we ate here this particular time is that it means that I can state with a clear conscience that the food we were served was some of the best restaurant food I have ever eaten. Particularly for a national chain, I was blown away by how good the quality was. One of the reasons I haven’t got any photos is that we were so keen to eat what was brought out, I never paused to satisfy my Instagram calling. The starters were divine, particularly the crispy pork rolls with peanut sauce. I’ll be honest, I ate the rest of the peanut sauce with my fork when I’d run out of things to dip in it.

Our main meals were also delicious. Spicy and fresh and rich and complex. My wife had to take her ladle/spoon back off me once I’d started trying the broth of her pho and the flavour of the curry was scrumptious. Short of the mushrooms (which I’ve never been that keen on) every morsel on both of our plates was eaten by the end of the sitting. Also the pho comes with some bits to be added to taste. When my wife, ‘queen of the chillies’, has eyes watering from the heat – you know you’ve done well.

With the slightest nod towards some level of moderation we decided to share a pudding. As expected, most options contained milk but we were able to have banana fritters just without the ice cream. We should have been completely full but so good were these as well that the plate was virtually licked clean. (I say virtually – fritters don’t really leave anything to lick once you’ve eaten them).

In the interests of balance, I should look for some constructive points to make. The only thing I can think of is that we realised later that we’d ordered prawn crackers and they never arrived. So I guess that’s something. Although they would have had to be the best bloody prawn crackers in the world to have satisfactorily displaced the space taken by anything else we’d eaten.

In the end, we didn’t pay anything (other than a tip) and their offer ended up being much more generous than I’d expected. However I can honestly say that I would have written such a gushing post in the first place if this is the service we would have had the first time round. And so good was the food that we will definitely be going back – so I’ll soon know whether this was just special treatment! Make the allergen matrix available to customers as standard, or roll out the allergen menu I know you’re hoping to make available and I would honestly put this as one of the best overall restaurants (for quality of food along side allergy management) out there.