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

There are 9 Starbuck’s in town, and about as many non-Starbuck’s Coffee Shops.

As far as other “chains”, there’s an “It’s a Grind” on University (which have a great “perks” program where you get deep discounts at least once a month - like $1 specialty drinks, buy one get one free, and free drink on your birthday), the standard coffee shop in the Barnes & Noble, and the Hastings on Texas and Holleman has a nice cafe too.

Our favorite Coffee Shop is Sweet Eugene’s. Couches everywhere, free Wi-Fi, Great Coffee, an outside patio area, a drive thru, good prices, and a donut shop inside the store. The staff is very nice and very calm considering how crowded it gets.

Their Mocha drinks have chocolate sprinkles in them…yum.

There’s a place called “Coffee Station” on Harvey, but I’ve not been there. There’s also another called “Java Joy” way over on the other side of town by the Wal-Mart that has a couple of meeting rooms and good coffee as well. There’s a little Shack called “Java Jitters” behind the IHOP on University, but we didn’t like their Iced Mocha so much. We know people who say this is the best place in town, so don’t take my word for it.

Our favorite Starbuck’s is on Texas and Villa Maria. The servers there seems like they know what they are doing better than the others, and it’s fairly convenient with it’s drive thru. They once accidentally gave us caffinated coffees instead of the decaf we ordered (it was 10:30 at night…and a Venti) and early in the morning, we called and told them that their mistake had made it so that we didn’t sleep all night, so they gave us a free (decaf) coffee. Very nice of them.

The Starbuck’s in Northgate (on University right across from the campus) made the best Mocha Frappuccino I’ve ever had. Apparently I was what they called a “Once-A-Week Decaf Frap”, so instead of making a mix they would have to throw out at the end of each day, they have to make them special. They brewed a strong cup of decaf, and blended the most wonderful icy cold beverage. I also met a homeless man who said his name was Alfred, and he was named after Albert Einstein. I had to wait for the coffee to brew so I asked Alfred to sit down and talk with me. He knew all about the weather and how cold it was going to get…and he was right. He told me he doesn’t get much sleep, but he was very proud of his coat. He was sweet, but I kept losing his attention.

Coffee shops are almost always packed, well, not during the summer and the Winter break, but that makes them more interesting. There’s almost always a study group or Bible study going on, and almost everyone has a laptop and ear buds.

Oh, something cool about the Starbuck’s in the Kroger’s. Get a Kroger’s card (which they scan in for discounts throughout the store) and make sure you give it to the Starbuck’s clerk. After 10 drinks, you get one free.

Oh, and if you wanted to, you could always load my Starbuck’s card using these instructions. I’ve contacted Starbuck’s with a request to make a widget or something that would make it easy for people to load Starbuck’s cards, but no news yet.

Enjoy

Jorge