Six Star Magazine Six Star Magazine Fall 2018 | Page 26

Pho Hoai Vietnamese Okotoks | Alberta
It takes 18 hours to make #15 Beef Sate Pho. Teresa Nguyen, the 68-year-old matriarch
of Pho Hoai Vietnamese, opened Calgary’s first Vietnamese restaurant 31 years ago after
escaping the war in Malaysia in the 1970s. The Okotoks location, south of Calgary, opened
four years ago.
Most restaurants in Canada that make Pho take the easy shortcut by blending all the
ingredients together at once. Not so with Teresa: She prepares the two parts of the soup, a
secret sauce and beef broth, separately before combining them.
Her special seven-spice mixture, Nu’ó’c tho’m, includes star anise, cinnamon and salt — but
the exact recipe remains a mystery, including to most of her staff. This mixture is first heated,
then added to the beef broth, a method that reveals the true nuances of the soup. “Pho Hoai
does a good job of providing a variety of textures [in the Pho] — you can tell the brisket from
the flank,” says Calgary-based food and travel writer John Gilchrist.
La Fogata Latina Victoria | British Columbia
With few Colombian immigrants in British Columbia, one small Vancouver Island restaurant
has big aspirations: “People travel through flavours and we want to show Canada our culture,” says
Samy Contreras, who took over the restaurant with husband Ernesto two years ago.
Importing most of their ingredients directly from Colombia — including corn flour for the
arepas sandwiches, and, of course, coffee — the restaurant also imports frozen juice. The juice
is the best way to preserve the exotic flavours of soursop (a creamy white custard apple) and
tamarillo (tree tomato).
The cozy, small interior is decorated with yellow-blue-red Colombian flag accents and artwork,
making the place seem like an authentic Bogota street-food hotspot. The cuisine serves to amplify
the effect. “The food is iconic Colombian,” says Shelora Sheldon, a food writer, editor and culinary
judge based in Penticton, “from the corn mesa arepas stuffed with braised meats to the patacones
that are heavenly slices of fried and salty plantain served with house-made garlic sauce.”
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