Bryan & College Station, Texas

If you haven’t tried Vietnamese food, Rosie’s Pho is a great place to start. There’s a big Asian population here in College Station, and the Asian Market on Texas over by the Tractor Supply will prove it.

As will the amount of Asian food restaurants.

Personally, I don’t completely like the Americanized Chinese food that’s over fried and over sauced. It usually has me in the bathroom within the hour. Well, sometimes I like it…not the bathroom part.

My favorite is Vietnamese. And almost always, I get the Bun, which is a rice vermicelli noodle bowl with salad on the bottom and some sort of topping. I like mine topped with spring rolls and BBQ pork.

I usually opt out of the fish sauce…I don’t like the smell or the taste of it, but I always squirt my noodles with Hoisin Sauce, garlic Chili Sauce and a little Soy Sauce.

Here’s a Wiki Definition of Hoisin Sauce:

Hoisin sauce, or Haixian Sauce, (hǎixiānjiàng) also called suckling pig sauce, is a Chinese dipping sauce. The word Hoisin is a romanization of the Chinese word “海鮮” as pronounced in Cantonese. Despite the literal meaning of “seafood,” Hoisin sauce does not actually contain fish. It is similar to the sweet noodle sauce made from fermented soybeans, but has the added ingredients of garlic, vinegar, and chilli peppers. Additionally, it tastes less pungent than sweet noodle sauce. Mandarin-style Hoisin sauce ingredients include water, sugar, soybeans, white distilled vinegar, rice, salt, wheat flour, garlic, and red chili peppers, and several preservatives and coloring agents. Traditionally, Hoisin sauce is made using sweet potato.

The vermicelli bowl is a large bowl of vermicelli rice noodles (the thin white ones), served over lettuce and sliced cucumbers, then topped with roasted peanuts, pickled carrots (and sometimes onions), cilantro and mint sprig, and then your choice of meats or spring rolls.

Pho is a noodle soup, which is traditional Vietnamese restaurant fare, but I’ve never been able to not be excited about the noodle bowl, and I get the same thing every time. Maybe next time.

As far as appetizers go, check out the Summer Rolls. They are lettuce, mint, and usually a few shrimp, wrapped in a thin white rice wrap. We call them surgical glove rolls. They usually come out with a sweet peanut/Hoisin Sauce to dip in.

We usually come out of there nice and full, and also pretty happy that we got some salad in us at the same time. It’s always so freah tasting. Very nice.

Oh, when you go in there, you’ll notice there’s a colorful poster to the right of the cashier. Those are “bubble” smoothies. I’m not sure what they call them, but you’ve got to try one. My suggestion is the Honeydew Melon with Black Pearl Tapioca Balls. My second suggestion is a Mocha with Black Pearl Tapioca Balls or Coffee Jellies.

Black Pearl Tapioca Balls have a very slight sweet taste, and the texture is like a Gummi Bear. They don’t taste like the Tapioca you might be used to. It’s really just a texture thing, but it’s really cool. There’s something very “addicting” about drinking/eating one of these. Just try it…for $3, you won’t be out much. The Coffee Jellies are like very concentrated Jello that’s been cut up into small cubes…very cool taste and feel. They have Mango Jellies too, and they are yummy as well.

There are a few other places in town that have these smoothies, and they are all made similarly, but Rosie’s Pho has the cheapest. Asian Cuisine and Tea House Restaurant next to Play It Again Sports has a cool machine that seals the top on the cup and you poke the straw through the top.

You’ll notice that you get these smoothies with a huge straw…that’s so you can suck the balls out.

The staff and service at Rosie’s Pho is Really great…they even made “Child-friendly” chopsticks for our kids…which they loved (pictured at the top of this post).

Oh, I almost forgot, you should also try the Iced Coffee (ca phe sua da). They brew a strong cup of coffee in a “drip filter” onto about a half inch of Sweetened Condensed Milk, then pour that over ice. Yum. Usually the coffee has chicory in it so it’s real strong, but kinda nutty, and very tasty.

Enjoy

Jorge

Tanglewood park is a great park in town. It’s one of three “Splash Pads” in Bryan and College Station (one at Tiffany Park, and another at Lincoln Center).

These Splash Pads consist of fountains and even a water bucket that fills up and splashes down. It’s great fun in the summer and spring. It’s about the size of a basketball court…maybe smaller, and there’s a controller to turn it on when it turns itself off. The cycle is about 10 minutes, and the controller is just a post with a round top that is touch activated.

I read this about the Splash Pads from the Eagle website:

Based on the popularity splash pads in Bryan/College Station, city officials are considering including more of these features in future projects, so be sure to keep the look out for new splash pads this Summer.

I called the City of Bryan Parks and Recreation, and they told me that the water is City Water, just like you’d get out of your faucet.

Tanglewood park has several covered pavillions, three playgrounds, a sand volleyball court and loads of picnic tables.

We really like this park. Not as much variety as Austin’s Colony (well, except for the Splash Pad) but great playgrounds, and although it’s a well know park, we’ve never had trouble finding empty picnic tables.

You can get there from Villa Maria, 29th or Texas Ave.

And just so you know, here’s a website that sells these Water Play Features. I don’t know if Bryan and College Station get them any cheaper, but we can assume that these are approximately the price our city paid as well. I guess that’s what our taxes are paying for. I’m OK with that. Parks are fun.

Go play.

Jorge

I’m going to go ahead and stick with the word “Gooeyest”, although it’s probably not an “official” word. Ayway, Mr’ G’s Pizzeria on University is my pick for the gooeyest. Very tasty pizza…and they had a whole wheat crust…that’s great.

Another place in town that has a whole wheat crust is Double Dave’s. I’d have to say that Double Dave’s is our favorite pizza in town. You have to ask the cooks to make a whole wheat pizza for the buffet…well worth the wait. We always ask them for two…it’s what we like for our family.

Back to Mr. G’s restaurant. When I first went in there, I just wanted to pick up a menu and get a dessert. We got the cream and chocolate canoli. I’m not exactly sure what it was called, but it was very tasty.

That’s when I found out that you can actually order from Cenare’s next door, and eat it at Mr. G’s.

Cenare’s and Mr. G’s is owned by the same people, and they are connected by a door on one end of the restaurants.

We liked the idea, so we got a large whole wheat pepperoni from Mr. G’s and a Gnocchi with Pesto Cream sauce from Cenare’s.

The Gnocchi was excellent. We had never tasted a cream pesto, and we are big fans of the potato pasta dumpling (Gnocchi).

I’d say that the only thing we didn’t like about the whole experience was that the Gnocchi ran out very quickly (6 of us eating it) and considering it was around $10, I sure wanted more. Maybe if I was the only one eating it…oh well. It was just so good.

The pizza was very good. So, why did I choose “Gooey” well, you know those pizza commercials where they pick up the slice and it’s attached to the rest of the pie with long strings of cheese? Well, that’s what happened. These strings of cheese went on forever.

So, we’re all eating, enjoying ourselves, and I hear some “gagging” coming from my boy’s direction. Turns out he had swallowed some pizza, and hadn’t bit through the string, so his little esophagus was not happy. I grabbed the end sticking out of his mouth and pulled out what seemed like about a foot of cheese. OK, maybe not a foot, but it was long. He was fine.

Anyway, the “large” pizza was a huge 16″, and the service was great. We sat and ate outside. Very nice.

I think they charged us around $13 for the large whole wheat Pepperoni Pizza (although a whole wheat pepperoni is not on the menu).

Next time we might try the Gyro Pizza on Whole Wheat. Sounds good.

Also, we thought the ranch dressing was over-salted. I did not tell the owner, but we won’t order it again. See, we make our own ranch at home and maybe we’re just used to not so much salt. I never know if I should complain or not. I didn’t feel like it deserved a complaint. Everything else was just great.

They’ve got TVs on with sports or cooking, and the atmosphere is great.

Enjoy…careful with the gooey cheese!

jorge