Golden Bowl

Golden Bowl’s food is fresh and reasonably priced. Two sisters run it, and EVERYTHING is homemade. They make their beef, chicken, (seafood and veg broths too) completely from scratch the traditional way – simmer marrow bones and herbs, scorched onion, etc. They have the usual choices of beef cuts, nice amount of onion, cilantro and white pepper sprinkled on top. She is picky about serving it completely hot too, so when you add bean sprouts it doesn’t cool the broth down too much.

Recommended: bun (cold rice vermicelli noodle salad bowl); pho (hot beef noodle soup); “chicken pho” (shreds of boneless white meat, some greens and cilantro and the crispy fried shallots as a garnish on top); seafood and veg noodle soups of various types; squid; traditional fish cakes; egg; “Vietnamese beef stew” noodles soup; spicy beef noodle soups (one hue (Vietnamese regional version) type and one satay type); sweet fish sauce; peking ravioli" (the pork filling is juicy and tender, and the wrapper is clearly homemade dough that is thicker than factory made dumpling wrappers, and nice texture); sugar cane shrimp paste appetizer; “fresh” rolls/summer rolls (soft rice paper wrap rolls).

The bun (pronounced more like “boon” than “bun”) has vegetables – mint, slivered carrot and daikon and cuke, bean sprouts, shredded lettuce. Plus the grilled pork, or grilled pork and grilled sugarcane shrimp paste patties, or fried spring rolls on top. A nice dusting of ground up peanut as garnish. The rice vermicelli are perfectly prepared, never too soggy or undercooked.

As specials, they often have roasted duck with rice or in noodle soup, as well as curry chicken noodle soup.

It’s exit 4 off route 293 and you drive on Queen City Ave, toward Elm Street, but it’s on the right before Elm.

Samantha Diep is the sister who runs the floor, and she is great to ask questions of and will explain to you. She speaks four languages – Vietnamese, various Chinese dialects. They do have a few Chinese regional dishes on menu like Taiwanese stir-fry cabbage, pork chop over rice.