PHO SHIZZLE

My resolute fight for culinary relativity seems one of my more redeemable qualities. I’ve said in the past that it’s taste that matters, but even that is subjective to my own preferences- my memories, my Faye Wongs; and therefore, you needn’t ever take me too seriously on the grounds of good food. I am a humble eater. I try to give honest reviews. However, there is one sphere in which my orthodoxy remains vigilant, supposedly unchanging- uncompromisable. Except however, in rare, so far, yearly cases. 

I like to devote whatever patriotism I have in my body to where we eat and kung fu. That said, no heart can ever serve two masters, which is why I have a tendency to wane in the prior. My city has great spaces to eat. It can hold its own, and we owe that greatly not to the haute terrors that tyrannically rule our palettes, but the proletariat parboilers, poachers, and pastry bakers  who autodidactically serve novelty to our tongues. Sometimes, however, novelty can be so great, and so alluring beyond food that I can’t help but entertain it.

It was such novelty that brought me to a place in a city I’d never had the intention of eating and writing in. I’ve known this place to exist for a long long time, and it was always a fanciful ambition of mine, albeit rather flaky one, to eat there. But when  a place hashes out novelty restaurants and fine huneyz, who am I, with my limited time on this plain of existence, to refuse? Hey, the heart wants what the heart wants. If I haven’t said so already, I’ll say it now- an opportunity lost is one lost forever. 

Considering only its stellar, phonetically punning namesake, Pho Shizzle Viet Thai has nothing miraculous to offer its eaters. That said, I don’t blame it.
 

Located in Cambridge, Ontario, it holds as much of a monopoly as is possible in a place that is arguably the largest culinary wasteland in my region. In my city, Pho Shizzle might be in danger, but with little competition to encourage it, it has no need for any creativity beyond Viet Thai favourites. Is this bad? Not in the least. Some people dislike it very much. My company couldn’t trust a space with a live fish tank. She claimed there was something fishy about it. And although the tank is a lucky convention in some Asian restaurants, this dynamic is neither here nor there. 

I didn’t mind Pho Shizzle. I don’t mind Pho Shizzle. Maybe I was smitten. Maybe I was in the mood for something a little familiar. A little sexy.  But, if the Viet Thai menu is as big as it always is, any place can be novel. Good or bad is neither here nor there. The Pad Thai didn’t taste like any other Pad Thai I’ve had. But, good or bad is neither here nor there.
 

So, how did I make for an interesting trip, aside from choking on tea? Novelty drinks helped. An iced jackfruit cocktail filled with colourful crushed ice and the kind of fruit syrup your relatives from France bring you home every time they visit. Don’t forget the fleshy husks of mulberries’ yellow cousins, sitting at the bottom, tasting mildly like bananas and reminiscently chemical; chewy and crisp, juxtaposed next to the slivers of tasteless gelatin that made the drink a textural playground, a dream for the child in my heart.
 

I sprung for the pork vermicelli bowl, if not to learn from it. A favourite of mine, its clean soapy qualities are always a return, especially when the side of sweet sauce is poured over every piece of pork, lettuce, sprout, coriander, and mint bound together by slippery rice vermicelli. Every time it’s a good wake up call. I’ve never hated the dish anywhere. With charred pork slices flavoured only by their own juices and the grill, as well as crunchy cucumber sticks, it was a buoyant adventure. Shoot, It was a great Friday. Do I owe it to Pho Shizzle? I do in part. With an entrée that had me stuffed for only 10 dollars, Pho Shizzle had me appreciating the familiar things in life.
 

Yes, young masters, whether it was the food, company, or poetic ambiguity of this roaming review, something about where I was that night had me leaving it loving it.

Pho Shizzle Viet Thai Restaurant
(519) 658-4796
100 Jamieson Parkway #11
Cambridge, ON
N3C 4B3


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