If you're going to eat phở in Ottawa's China town, it's gotta be at Pho Bo Ga 2 or Pho Bo Ga L.A. The two restaurants are owned by the same owners, and they also own Pho Bo Ga 3 down the road from L.A (creative huh?).
CK, my mom, and I recently ate at Phở Bò Gà 2. Their specialty is soup, soup, soup!
I ordered M13 on their menu which was the spicy beef stew with rice noodles. Not as good as the home cooked beef stew, but still pretty tasty. This is a good option if you don't want to order the standard beef rice noodle soup.

My mom loves both rice noodles and yellow egg noodles, so she ordered M7 on the menu which provides both. On the menu, the description is shrimp and pork meat with rice noodle, but it really does come with two types of noodles. It also has a deep fried shrimp chip on top. You have to eat the shrimp chip fast because the soup will make it very soggy quickly.
CK loves the standard fare, so he ordered 001 on the menu: rare beef with rice noodle. If you want more variety in your meats, I would get the beef and chicken soup, or the beef soup with rare beef, beef tripe, and beef balls.
All soup should be served with lime wedges, bean sprouts, hot peppers, and herbs. Whether or not you eat the herbs, you should throw it in your soup for flavor.
Phở Bò Gà L.A
784 Somerset Street West
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Telephone: 613-230-2931








Our next dish was also something not offered on their English menu: salt and pepper sole. This is my mom's favourite dish at this restaurant, and we order it every time we eat here. The sole is deep fried, and then seasoned with salt, pepper, and chilis. It is served over a bed of stir fried broccoli.
Our meal, of course, was served with chinese tea and white rice.
We finished our meal with red bean soup. The red bean soup here is good but not the best I have had. There is not as much bean as I would like. I think they also add coconut milk to it.


CK ordered the house cheeseburger with no bacon. It was served with greens and fries.
Our bill came in a re-used sweet basil seed pouch which I thought was smart.
Besides the good food, I really enjoyed the excellent service. The staff here are very friendly, pay close attention to detail, and really make sure that the customer's needs are taken care of.
On the night of our wedding, we celebrated with a traditional 9 course chinese meal (not counting dessert) at Sea King Shark Fin Seafood Restaurant here in Ottawa. I was ecstatic because that meant that I was going to have great food pictures for my blog. CK is now more convinced than ever that I love food more than him :)
Our second course was stir fried snow pea shoots with dried scallops. Snow pea shoots are considered a Chinese delicacy, and are perfect to harvest this time of the year. The snow pea shoots were very tender. It is one of my favourite Chinese vegetables.
Our third course was the shark fin soup, a must at a wedding dinner. Shark fin doesn't have a lot of taste, and they look like little pieces of vermicelli.
Our 4th course was abalone with baby bok choy and chinese mushrooms. This, to me, is also another must at a Chinese wedding dinner.
Following that was the twin lobster. In Chinese culture, good things always come in pairs.
Next came the crispy deep fried whole chicken with shrimp chips.
The 7th dish was a fish dish. The meat of the fish was stir fried, and the bones were deep fried to make them edible. The Chinese believe that fish bones are a good source of calcium.

The 9th course came a little late: deep fried shrimp balls served with a sweet cherry sauce.
We finished the meal off with red bean soup and fortune cookies.
Here comes the best part of the meal. I SWEAR this was my fortune.
It was the perfect fortune for a die hard foodie, and it definitely made my night.

Next are the sauces and soup section. They have just about every asian hot sauce available, and offer many ingredients to make traditional chinese soups.
Chicken feet look kind of creepy uncooked, but they are tasty as a dim sum dish. There's not much meat to chicken feet, so you mainly eat it for the skin. 


