What's New Restaurants: PHOnomenal
The north side of Ritan Park was once squarely Russian grounds, but these days the eateries in the area are increasingly diverse, with the opening of PHOnomenal adding a touch of Southeast Asia.
PHOnomenal is a comfy place. A few outdoor tables, repurposed-wood furniture and a forest of indoor plants give it an organic feel. It would work equally well for a simple bowl of noodles for lunch as it would as a special dinner destination.
We decided on the latter and between the two of us, four generously portioned dishes made us feel self-consciously gluttonous.
We started by working our way through the soft shell crab and avocado spring rolls (RMB 88). There wasn’t too much avocado to be seen, but the crab was moreish and crispy, and contrasted well with the soft and chewy rice paper wrappers. The Thai crispy lettuce wraps (RMB 48), came as a plate of lettuce leaves, spicy bean salad and prawn crackers for self assembly. For one of us this was too high on the Scoville scale, but for the other it gave the perfect hit of heat.
The Special Pho (RMB 58) was a light and fragrant mix of beef balls, sirloin, beef tendon, and supple noodles. However, the PHOnomenal special red wine beef brisket (RMB 68) was the star of the show, a flavorsome stew of beef, wine, lemongrass, onion, and vanilla.
It’s hard to be critical of PHOnomenal. The food is hearty, the staff charmingly happy, and the prices reasonable. They did forget our rice, which would have completed the sauce-heavy beef brisket, but by then we were so stuffed that we were content not to remind them. Shannon Aitken
PHOnomenal
Daily 10am-3pm, 5-10pm. 1-09, 39 Shenlu Jie, Chaoyang District (8561 8859)
元素东南亚料理: 朝阳区神路街39号1-09商铺
1km southeast of Chaoyangmen station (Lines 2 and 6)
Photo: Ken
