Grand Century Mall Food Court - San Jose

There are at least 7-10 stalls here at the food court. Two out of those sell juices and dessert only. The rest sell all Vietnamese fares from pho all the way to canh bun. There is a stall that sell some Thai noodles (Thai Lovers). Their fried rice noodle (if I'm not mistaken the name is Bangkok noodle) is quite a killer. Hubby just loves it.

But today he wants something wet and hot and soupy. So after checking out each stall we chose seafood pho for him and canh bun for me. Seriously I had no idea what canh bun is. I thought pho was kinda 'boring'. Not in the bad meaning, I just felt like having something different, exploring a new dish. One stall's named Banh Xeo had a picture of some sort of noodle soup that looked spicy. When I got closer then I realized there was explanation as to what canh bun is. It is basically tomato based shrimp noodle soup. Ooh..so it's not going to be spicy then. Oh well I'll try it anyway.
When I got my soup I noticed the soup had a very nice fiery color with something that looked like tofu floating on the soup with tons of cilantro. Even hubby asked me whether I asked for extra cilantro. I'm a converted cilantro lover now so I embraced them with delight. My bowl of noodle came with a small plate of greens that I couldn't name them except for the serrano and lettuce. Beside that also a small container of chilly paste and shrimp paste. I dumped all the greens and chilly paste and decided to pass on the shrimp paste. It was quite strong smell and raw. Well me and hubby are more used to shrimp paste mixed with chilly instead of just plain shrimp paste.
After mixing all the greens and squirting the wedge of lime I started digging in. The soup was sweet and just a bit tangy. Very refreshing. I like it. The stuff floating on top turned out to be indeed tofu skin. There were also another chunks inside that looked like tofu but turned out to be some sort of seafood cake. Cake may not be the right word because it tasted more like a bunch of fish roe in a more condensed form.


Hubby's seafood pho was smaller than he usually gets at pho joints. But the taste was good and they used fried garlic which add to the soup flavor. It came with small plate of bean sprout, basil and a wedge of lime. The seafood consist of shrimps, squid, fish ball and fish cake. Probably not the best value pho seafood.

Grand Century Mall * 1111 Story Rd, San Jose, CA 95122 *

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