The Phamily Table just celebrated their 1 year anniversary in business and invited us for a special 8 course dinner to experience what a private dinner would be like. I was excited because I have been following Brandon and his team’s work through Instagram and his Vietnamese-inspired dishes are remarkable and unique.
Brandon Pham
Chef and Owner Brandon Pham gets a lot of his inspiration from his mother and he combined his training at Vancouver Community College. He then completed his apprenticeship under his mentor Chef Hamid Salimian at the Westin Wall Centre and then at Diva at the Met. It doesn’t stop there, he then worked at luxury hotels before making his way over to Copenhagen to stage at Michelin star restaurants.Returning to Vancouver, he worked at a few more notable restaurants and hotels until he ultimately decided to create The Phamily Table.
2018 Richmond Night Market
On the weekends, you can find The Phamily Table at the Richmond Night Market for their braised pork belly. What makes this dish unique is that they smoke it in front of you so when you open the containers, a bunch of smoke escapes.
8 Course Phamily Dinner
The menu looks pretty darn amazing!
Fermented plum cocktail
The dinner started with a fermented plum cocktail to kick off the start of the meal.
Amuse Bouche
To start off the dinner, they created a amuse bouche to start off our palates for the night.
This 2 bite amuse bouche has pickled daikon, pickled ginger, octopus, herbs, an amazing vinaigrette, and even more freshly picked herbs. The presentation was really nice and was a good way to start the meal.
Squash and Chili
This unassuming dish is made of squash and covered in their own gochujang sauce, puffed rice, koji and purslane.
Tofu + Anchovy
The next dish is a lot lighter and is made of silky tofu, and topped with an anchovy, garlic, and shallot mixture. Then it has a doenjang broth. So good and well balanced. One of my favourite dishes of the night.
Mushroom + Sea snail
This dish was so magical and it has mushrooms, sea snails, herb stems, mustard and watercress. It was so good and a foragers dream. They use mushrooms that aren’t typical so it was good to see and taste the variety. Easily my favourite dish of the evening.
Smoked Sablefish
This delicious package is made of smoked banana leaf stuffed with sablefish and veggies. It is accompanied with a black bean sauce. The sablefish was very moist.
Chicken + Corn
This dish has a chicken meatball, roasted corn, chicken heart, lemongrass and lime. A very unique dish and I was surprised it went with lemongrass so well.
Also, that quail egg was perfectly cooked so it was still gooey in the centre.
Pork + Kimchi
The braised pork belly is served on top of kimchi and a fermented tomato and its juices. Then it is topped with onion flowers. A goodc combination of flavours but it was a bit salty for me.
Coconut and Ginger Pudding
This was the first dessert of the evening and it has a coconut and ginger pudding with honey, Szechuan peppercorn and crumbled cashews. I liked the different textures at play.
Cassava Cake
The cassava cake is paired with sweetened red bean and a pandan tapioca. Very delicious and not too sweet.
Mignardise
These were the last 2 bites to end off the evening with their “fruit roll up” and dehydrated beet. I was so stuffed at this point. This 8 course meal was realistically a 10 course meal.
Final Thoughts
This dinner lasted just under 3 hours and was a delight to taste such unique dishes with the Vietnamese and Korean influences. If you’re looking for private dinner at your place, The Phamily Table team are very experienced to create a dinner you wont’ forget.
Website:
http://www.thephamilytable.com/
