From pho to banh cuon, this Vietnamese spot has been a staple in Toronto’s East Chinatown for 25 years

Metro Morning‘s food guide, Suresh Doss, joins us every week to discuss one of the many great GTA eateries he’s discovered.

This week, he talked to host Ismaila Alfa about a Vietnamese spot that has been a staple in Toronto’s East Chinatown for over two decades.

Ismaila: Where are we headed today? 

Suresh: We’re going to go to one of the oldest Vietnamese restaurants in East Chinatown, to a place called Que Ling.

By all measures, it is one of the pillars of Vietnamese dining in the city. It has been open for over 25 years at this point.

And despite being one of the cornerstones of East Chinatown — one of the oldest of the five Chinatowns in the city — it is still quite hidden.

Ismaila:  How so?

Suresh: So Chinatown East starts really at Gerrard and Broadview. As you cross the DVP, the facade and the visuals are immediately striking. And as you move through the neighbourhood, it starts to veer more toward South East Asia [with] Thai restaurants, Vietnamese restaurants.

Que Ling sits off a side residential street, near DeGrassi High, and it is very easy to miss. It’s in a retrofitted house. It’s family-run, with a small dining room, cooking family recipes representative of northern Vietnam, and Hanoi.

Ismaila: So what are we ordering?

Suresh:  Because of the city we live in, we can’t talk about a Vietnamese restaurant without talking about pho.

The idea of slow cooked broth with a superfluous amount of bones and herbs, poured over rice noodles, and then accented with sawtooth cilantro, red chilis, maybe some basil. 

The pho at Que Ling is really something special, with a lot of depth and flavour. They also offer a chicken broth version for non-pork eaters. 

Picture rice noodles in the chicken broth of your dreams. That is actually like the best chicken broth, again slow cooked with bones and herbs.

So maybe we will share a big bowl of that to start.

Ismaila: And then we move on to?

Suresh: One of the best tips I can give a curious diner in this city is, if you go to a place you’re not familiar with, look around at the room and see what everyone has has on the table.

At Que Ling, that dish is the bánh cuốn, a really popular breakfast dish in Northern Vietnam that is incredibly hard to make.

Ismaila: What does it look like?

What you will see is a plate dressed at the centre with these incredibly delicate flat rolls, pillow-y rice noodles that have been made with a fermented rice batter that is poured very thin over a steamer, cloth covered for literally seconds. 

Then it’s lifted to preserve its silky texture. It’s usually wrapped with a variety of fungus.

For radio, I will describe it as the most delicate-looking taco. 

Ismaila: How is it served?

It’s presented in a plate with Vietnamese sausage, which you can also skip [if you don’t eat meat], fermented chilies on the side, and a bowl of nước chấm — the iconic Vietnamese dipping sauce. Some greens are also there, like cilantro.

It is a beautiful plate. So the trick here is to try and gently lift the bánh cuốn and dip it in the nước chấm.

Add a chili to it, maybe a bite of cilantro.

Ismaila: I understand you love to get this in the summer. Why?

Suresh: Picture a hot summer morning. 

You are presented with this plate of bánh cuốn. You end up with this really soft noodle texture in your mouth.

That is cooling at first because the noodle, accented by the sweetness in the nước chấm, and the acid from the lime juice in the sauce. Maybe a little chilli or two in the back.

There’s usually a small mound of shallots on top of the rolls which add a little crunch.

We don’t often think of savoury dishes as cooling, I would say this is in my top five.