Cheektowaga restaurant offering bánh tét, thịt kho to join celebration
Join the celebration of the Lunar New Year at Pham’s Kitchen on Saturday, Feb. 1.
It starts at 10 a.m. at the Vietnamese restaurant, 2940 Union Road, Cheektowaga, next to Polish Villa. It you missed last year’s Tet party at Pham’s, you get another chance.
Ngoc Lan Nguyen, its outgoing owner, has added Tet trees festooned with crimson and gold, and extends her invitation to all. Her husband, Vincent Pham, has already made the bánh tét.
This holiday specialty is made across Asia. The Vietnamese version, a la Pham’s, are soup-can-gauge sticky rice rolls with a center of chopped pork belly and mung bean paste, simmered in a water bath for 12 hours, and sliced for serving. The green color is natural, from its banana leaf wrapper.
Thịt kho, pork belly and hard-boiled eggs braised in culinary caramel, will also be among the holiday offerings. (It’s $12 for both dishes.) Pham also made a holiday batch of headcheese, adding black tree ear mushrooms to the pork-in-gelatin charcuterie.
A lion dance performance is set for 1 p.m.-2 p.m. The restaurant’s regular menu will be available for purchase, with a free appetizer (crispy roll, crab rangoon, shrimp toast). Kids will get a red gift envelope, and each purchase can enter a raffle for a Pham’s gift card.
Maybe this is finally when you meet my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Western New York.
Pham’s Kitchen (review) soars with banh mi sandwich loaves baked fresh every morning. The Pham’s Special dac biet banh mi ($7.75) stuffs that fresh bread with three kinds of housemade cold cuts and pickled vegetables.
Then there’s outstanding beef phở, and bún chả, grilled pork patties and rice noodles in a tangy broth with pickled green papaya are major reasons I keep going back.
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