Song Huong: Beef Seven Ways

Song Huong ia a Vietnamese Restaurant near Nanaimo and 1st ave. KoreanGirl wanted to try out their Beef Seven Ways (Bo 7 Mon).It was about $26 and it serves 2 – 3 people. It’s a good item to order since you get a sense of the other Vietnamese dishes besides Pho and the rice dishes.

After we made the order, a few dishes came flying back to our table. There was no explanation into what we were supposed to do and what items went with which item. So.. good thing KoreanGirl and Mandu have common sense.

The first dish is a do-it-yourself rice wrap. You are given a hot-pot, raw beef, dehydrated rice wraps, vegetables, noodles, and sauce to create them. The waitress will turn on the stove and just wait for the broth to get hot enough to dunk your meat into it.

The raw beef looks pretty amazing for any meat eaters to set their eyes upon. Since the slices are so thin, you only need to dunk your meat into the hot-pot for a few seconds.

The other items to include in your rice wraps are the noodles and a plate of vegetables.

The plate has a large amount of herbs, pickled vegetables, cucumbers, bean sprouts, and bananas.

You also get some hot sauce, peanuts and onions. If you are allergic to certain things, best to let them know ahead of time.

The rice wraps are dehydrated so you need to soak them first before putting your wrap together.

You just throw it in the bowl with hot water.

Then you take it our and begin assembling your roll.

Mine turned out quite ugly, but at least it ended up in my belly. It can get a bit messy if you can’t roll it up tight enough.

Beef Congee was ok, but not as good as Chinese restaurants. I found it was a bit bland and needed something to it.

Grilled beef slices on pickled cabbage was good. There wasn’t a lot of meat, but I really like pickled vegetables.

This dish has 3 types of meat sausages. I initially didn’t know there was a difference since they kinda all look the same. A few of them had different subtle tastes to them. This dish was particularly everyone’s favorite.

Beef Meatball was a mixture of mushrooms, noodles and other items. It was already cut up in quarters and you can just share it around the table. All of us didn’t particularly like this since it was a bit bland and tough.

It’s not exactly 7 dishes, but it’s 7 varieties of beef. The meal was good for the price and made us 3 full. Now we know there is more to Vietnamese cuisine than just pho.

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