Hello everyone! This is Matthew, writing what will be the first post in a series of reviews for food and restaurants near campus. I didn't emphasize this in my introduction, but I adore food. I love trying out new restaurants, and I love trying new dishes in restaurants I like. For people that live on campus, it might be hard deciding where to get food near Shippensburg, so the Commuter Committe decided to start this series and identify all the best places to eat.
For our first review, we picked somewhere close to campus: Rice & Pho Vietnamese, where our very own Jeremy Satyawan is working right now.
First, I'll talk practicalities. The restaurant is about a mile from campus at 100 W. King St., but there is a major road in between campus and the restuarant, so it might be a bit difficult to walk to. If you have a car, I recommend using it since there is parking space in front of the building. However, once I was at the building, everything was buttery smooth. The ambiance is pretty chill, with smooth jazz playing in the background. I was immediately given a seat and a menu when I walked in, and the food was done remarkably fast after I ordered. So now, lets go into the most important part: the food.
In short, it was delicious. Pictured above I have two shrimp spring rolls on the right and the house special combination rice dish, with pork chops (the one with the char), shrimp, tofu (on top of the egg), and an egg on the left. I also got chicken pho, but when that came I was so occupied devouring my food that I forgot to take a picture. Believe me though, it looked as amazing as the rest.
I could go in depth explaining how everything tasted, but I'm not a professional food reviewer. Everything was delicious, so I'll focus on talking about my favorite parts.
I really liked the peanut sauce for the spring rolls; it added a lot of extra flavor that went well with the freshness of the rolls. The pork chop was also really tender and delicious (probably my favorite part of the meal). The pho was a new experience for me, and it was really flavorful. I brought some food home for my brother as well, and he recommends the tofu in particular (though he thought it was meat at first).
I also want to draw attention to the portion sizes. I'm a big eater (I usually get two entrees) and the portion sizes were big even for me. I got a kid's size bowl of pho to make sure I could eat everything, and I was still really full by the end. You will not leave hungry if you visit.
Overall, I absolutely recommend Rice & Pho. Especially since it's so close to campus, I think it's a great place for anyone to try out if they want something new and interesting. If you use RaiderBucks, you can even get a 10% discount.
Before I end this review, I also want to give Jeremy the floor, since he is the expert here. He's tried everything on the menu, so if you want a more experienced opinion then I'd defer to him.
Hey, it's Jeremy! There are many other dishes to try here, and I was excited when I learned we would be doing this restaurant for our first review! I’ll try and point out some of my favorites, but my apologies if I start to ramble.
For appetizers, Matt already talked about the spring rolls with its rice paper, shrimp, lettuce, and rice noodles served with a sweet peanut sauce. However, you can also get the spring rolls with shredded chicken, grilled pork, grilled chicken, and even tofu (for those who don’t eat meat)! Pork and shrimp egg rolls, as well as the fried shrimp rolls, are another set of fan favorites. The egg rolls consists of a pork, shrimp, or vegetable mixture rolled in an egg roll wrapper before being fried and served with a sweet and spicy Thai chili sauce. Don’t worry about how spicy the sauce might be because, in my opinion, it’s not very noticeable. The fried shrimp rolls on the other hand, are shrimps wrapped in a wonton wrapper before being fried and served with the same sauce. Other appetizers include the butter-fried chicken wings and the Vietnamese hoagie called Banh Mi (Bánh mì). The wings are fried before being sauteed in their special sauce, but to describe it in a palatable way, the sauce has a nice subtle sweetness that compliments the saltiness quite well in a way that the flavors dance on your tongue and leave you wanting more. Vietnamese hoagies (Banh Mi) would be a nice entryway into Vietnamese cuisine due to it being not too complex in any manner. The hoagies consist of grilled pork, pickled radish and carrots, cilantro, optional jalapenos, served in a toasted white bread roll.
Obviously we cannot eat without some drinks, right? So for beverages, they offer Thai tea, Vietnamese coffee, fruit smoothies (fruits are dependent on the season most likely), and iced limeades. Contrary to its name, the Thai tea is not your standard herbal or sweet tea you would get in other restaurants in the area. Thai tea consists of an herbal tea that is brewed and mixed with a sugary milk mixture that culminates into the beloved drink of many customers. Vietnamese coffee on the other hand is their specially brewed coffee combined with condensed milk, so with the regular caffeine content from the brew and the sugar from the condensed milk, it will give you more energy than your share of coffee from Sheetz, Starbucks, or Dunkin Donuts. Iced limeades are self-explanatory and the best way to describe it would be lemonades made with limes instead of lemons.
Stir-fry dishes here are quite fantastic and can be served with soft egg noodles, crispy egg noodles, or white rice. My personal favorite would be the crispy egg noodles as they are visually appealing, and the stir-fried vegetables and meats sit on this “bird’s nest” of noodles. The stir-fry consists of bok choy, carrots, onions, and your choice of meat or if you’re vegetarian; they have broccoli as well.
Vermicelli dishes are primarily vermicelli rice noodles, beansprouts, pickled radish and carrots, lettuce, and your choice of grilled chicken, grilled pork, grilled shrimp, egg rolls, tofu shrimp wrap, and fried tofu with a green onion sauce drizzled over and crushed peanuts on top of it as well. However, with a lot of the dishes here, their dishes are customizable and if you ever are curious on what they can and can’t do, feel free to ask as their staff are quite friendly.
Overall, Rice and Pho has a ton of options for you to choose from, with a good many of them being quite delicious. So swing down to King Street for some Vietnamese flavor sometime! You won't regret it, and we at the Commuter Committee recommend it wholeheartedly.
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