Trieu Chau - St Paul, MN

This place was filled with Vietnamese customers, which I took as a good omen. The food arrived at the surrounding tables looking salivating good, and the customers had buried their faces in the food with little conversation.

As usual I ordered the Pho and at $5.50, it beat most of the competition. The bowl arrived looking invitingly good. One sip of the broth was enough to discover it was off. It had such an overpowering anise (most likely) or all spice type flavor that it either had to be deliberate or the cook just dumped some in and never bothered to taste it. Either way it lost its appeal. The noodle was the right size and the meats were fairly tender but the tendon was the usual little nuggets of squishiness but tough chewy tissues I find in my own home brewed soup.

The cha gio/egg roll ($3.25) also looked promising and the skin was great but the inside was some form of meatless airy pasty filling heavy on carrots and ground something with a less than appealing texture.

The middle entry was grilled pork rice dish ($5.95, S3?) with a fried egg. This was just an average dish and fairly nondescript.

The right entree was one of their house specialties - a heavy cellophane style noodle with shrimp, squid, and scallops ($5.95, S9?). The soup despite being chili oil red was quite mild. This soup dish was probably the most satisfying of all the foods we tried here.

Overall, the food tasted as if it were prepared by a slightly above average home cook, not a cook that works full time in a restaurant. As much as I want to, I can't recommend this restaurant. It was a disappointment much to our dismay and pocket book.

Food Rating: 5.3

50o University Ave W
St Paul, MN
651.222.6148