Cheap Eats - Bubblicious

Phoenix Noodle Cafe takes flight with fruity teas, nifty noodles

When summer heat overwhelms, few things offer more relief than an air-conditioned afternoon spent slurping on noodles and tea. Phoenix Noodle Cafe’s clean, calm feel is spruced up with large, evocative black-and-white prints of diners slurping large soup bowls. Menus look like comic books, bright with color snapshots of favorite dishes and nifty dragon-tail icons that denote house specialties. Phoenix sparkles with the same energy one would find at a Singaporean noodle house whose vibe is pure go-go-go, or one of San Francisco’s Sunset district pho palaces continually chock-a-block with customers.

Clean, fruity fun: Bubble teas — a focal point of Phoenix’s menu — are offered in 50 varieties, from noxious durian and pasty red bean for the most hardcore of Asians to sno-cone flavors like blueberry and green apple. Served in a cup sealed with a thin membrane of plastic emblazed with Phoenix’s dragon-tail logo, the drinks feel like kiddie treats, right down to the satisfaction of popping the sharp-ended straw through the lid. The passion fruit snowie bubble drink ($3) is as much brain-freezing, slushie fun as its name suggests, and the peach green b-tea ($2.25) cools your head with soothing, Jolly Rancher-iced tea flavor. Of the choices of tapioca pearls, coffee jelly and fruit jelly, the best is the fruit jelly. Reminiscent of waxy, movie-theater gumdrops, the fruit jelly bits might prove startling for the uninitiated, but it takes just a few sips and chews to get into the swing.

I’ve gotta crush: There are certain phrases you can place on a menu that will get diners salivating from the second they see them. The first is “sharable minis,” the second is “crushed rice plate.” Of the first category, the roasted quail ($5.95) proves a favorite, with flesh nut-brown from rubbings of honey and soy, as soft as butter and almost as rich. Chances are you won’t share much of this mini.

The lemongrass pork chop, Vietnamese sausage and baked egg combo’s crushed rice ($6.95) nearly gets trampled in the rush to clean the plate of its outstanding meats. With ribbons of crispy, burnt fat clinging to their glossy tenderness, the pork chops are charbroiled perfection, with just the slightest hint of lemongrass. Vietnamese sausage boasts the same springy, dense texture of the beef and pork balls you’ll find in Cantonese noodle soups. The baked egg is a delicious Asian rendition of macaroni pie, delivered as a thin slice of vermicelli bound with egg and dotted with bits of black mushroom.

Love you pho-ever: Phoenix’s pho with rare steak and beef tendon ($5.95 for a big large) is the most delicious version I’ve tasted outside of Asia. Leaves of rare steak are pure velvet to the beef tendon’s sheer silkiness, made all the more gorgeous by sweet, rich broth caressed with the barest essence of star anise, nutmeg and cloves. A special combination seafood rice and egg noodle soup ($6.75) could do with a bit more seafood, as the three pork slices and two small, curled shrimp seem a bit lonely in the generous tangle of egg noodles and vermicelli. I’ll definitely revisit for a taste of the marinated roasted duck leg egg soup or the fried king crab claws wrapped with shrimp. Norcross may seem an unlikely location for this zippy, Asian noodle house, but one meal is all it takes to see great value in Phoenix’s exceptional dishes.

cynthia.wong@creativeloafing.com