Phuong Trang revisited and some day olds...

Oh man, it's been awhile since we've been here...

Phuong Trang, or as I call it, the Vietnamese Denny's...

We were hard pressed to find a non-busy place on Convoy Street on a Friday night. Our first choices, Okan or Sakura were crazy busy. Instead of Japanese, we headed over to Convoy Plaza to try our luck at Phuong Trang.

Pessimistic me thought we'd be waiting forever judging from the long lines of people waiting outside for a spot. However, since it was just us three, the receptionist was able to find us a table within minutes, so score! And kudos to Bert for even venturing to ask how long the wait was. The fortunate timing of the folks who exited that table was very auspicious for us.

Beef was on our mind:

The condiments. For some reason, I thought that chopsticks used to be at the table. You know, those squarish red or green ones? Well, it's been a long time since we'd been here so maybe those were discarded for the disposable wooden ones.

The vegetable plates came first. This one was for our Banh Hoi with Beef - lettuce with pineapple, cucumber, pickled daikon and carrots, along with mint and cilantro sprigs.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten how Phuong Trang presents their beef, seasoned quite well and rolled up around a green onion, topped with chopped peanuts atop a bed of the pressed rice vermicelli patties. If wanted the circular rice paper sheets, it would be a mere $1.50 more. We just wanted to eat this with the lettuce, plus I love how the rice patties soak up the juice from the grilled meats...

TC's bum with shrimp. The bowl was not overly large and was a decent size for her. The chopped vegetables were on the bottom waiting to be mixed up and in TC's case, squirted with Hoisin sauce. You can see that they were not skimp with the skrimps.

Bert and I wanted to try their version of Banh Xeo (Vietnamese crepe). We were happy to see how thin and crisp the crepe was.

The filling - bean sprouts, pork and shrimp (which of course you can't see in this photo).

I loved the crispy edges. I've had some banh xeo that were pretty soggy and didn't like it at all. This version is bigger than the one we've had at Pho Hiep Grill Chateau.

Bert and I both had the iced Vietnamese coffees with condensed milk. I don't know what I was thinking. I didn't end up sleeping until 3 am! But OMG, was it good - they make it pretty strong here. Thanks to this coffee, I was able to finish "Thicker than Blood" by Shalini Boland, ha ha.

Dessert was right next door at Big Joy Family Bakery. Seating was at capacity so we took these macarons home to enjoy, one each and the rest for the next day!

I bought two sets of day olds for $4 each (or $1 per macaron). The opened set's flavors were: cappucino, chocolate, sea salt caramel, and red velvet.

The flavors above were pistachio, strawberry, sea salt caramel, and vanilla. The sea salt caramel macarons were individually wrapped (seems like a waste of plastic to me).

Of course, these weren't "fresh" as in made that day, but hey, I was willing to sacrifice a tiny bit of freshness so we could get more flavors! That being said, these were still pretty good even if they were a day old.

Tomorrow - Pork would be featured in our two part lunch...