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Dac Phuc (Vietnamese cuisine)  $

 8.5
JaT Rating

198 W Santa Clara Street, San Jose, 95113  (Directions)


408-297-5517


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Classy looking Vietnamese place on the outside leads to no frills interior.


Reviewer: Jason
Total Reviews: 1020
Reviewed: 1/25/2006
Rating: 8.5
My photo gallery 		Dac Phuc comes in as a wish list item and we're not afraid to tackle the streets of San Jose anymore. After dozens of visits to the downtown area, Im familiar with the locations of the freeway onramps :) Dac Phuc has to be one of the most visible restaurants off Santa Clara street. With a modern exterior, you would think the restaurant serves some type of Asian fusion cuisine. That was my inital thought and yes I was wrong. Interior is your average pho house decorations and menu selections. The prices are very reasonable and the waitress will even warn you about the hot sauce.

It's been months since I've had pho and I resisted my usual com dia plate. I ordered a small bowl of noodles and steak with a vietnamese coffee. Pho is one of the cuisines where it's best to eat on a cold and cloudy day, I swear it taste 2x as good. Another reason to eat pho is the service time. Since the broth is brewing throughout the day, they can build your bowl in minutes for a speedy lunch.

The noodles had excellent texture to them with some chewiness to it. There wasn't an awful amount of noodles but just enough to do me in. Broth was semi-clear and not too salty. With white onions, green onions, and celantro floating around, broth had a pleasant mixture of fragrant veggies and fatty beef. It's one of the few places in my limited experience where the beef is served medium. The steak was probably one of the best I've had and a much thicker cut than other pho houses. With every bowl of pho comes a side of basil, sprouts, and jalepenos. I normally don't drop too much of the toppings since the basil can overwhelm the entire bowl. I do enjoy hot sauce and today's hot sauce was much hotter than siracha. You should have seen Terry piling on the chili and he paid the price on the way back to work. He must had said his mouth was still burning 10 minutes after we left the restaurant.

Today's lunch visit at Dac Phuc was a good one and would highly recommend giving them a try. Firm noodles, flavorful broth, thick sliced steak, and spicy sauce will beat the socks off your boring cafeteria sandwich or burger. If you are put off by the parking situation in downtown San Jose, there's a parking structure about 2 blocks away on Almaden and metered parking around the block. We found parking in no time and in my many visits to San Jose, I've always found parking easily.
 


Reviewer: Terry
Total Reviews: 738
Reviewed: 1/26/2006
Rating: 8.5
My photo gallery 		I'll be honest. The exterior of this place kind of turned me off for the longest time. Judging from the outside, you could think this place to be some kind of fancy vietnamese-fusion restaurant with expensive dishes that don't fill you up.

Jason wanted to take down the wishlist request, so I finally relented. I walked inside and all of my visions were shattered. This is your drag-out, beat-down, hole-in-the-wall pho type of place. The aromas. The crowded tables filled with patrons. The bustling of activity. Perfect.

We are shown a table in the back that is rickety and bare. But its all good. This is my kind of Pho place. The table has the standard stuff on it except no napkin dispenser. That was weird. Usually I wipe down some utensils while waiting for waiter to take my order. No can do here.

I go with the Large #1. This is just a beef Pho. The basic.

The soup arrives relatively quick, but perhaps on the slow side for a Pho restaurant. But this place is busy, so I let it slide.

My bowl arrives and its definitely a good size. There is a TON of red meat floating in there. I remove about 60% of it. Sometimes you get Pho with meat in it that is not red. For those that care, this place has the raw stuff in there that is cooking in your bowl. Nice touch. But too much for me. So out it goes.

Then the lady walks up with napkins (just a few) and a bottle of sauce. She is very cautious to warn us that it is VERY hot. Oh my god. How many times have I heard that. Whatever. Thanks for the hot sauce.

I squeeze a bunch of it into my soup and begin eating. It is a little warm. Its not that normal vietnamese hot sauce. It is some of that, and some of the lemony red hot sauce you see in mexican salsa bars. Its an interesting combination.

I continue eating the flavorful broth and the tasty noodles. It reminds me a lot of Pho To Chau in the late 90s. Really good stuff, unpretentiously. Anyway, I notice its getting harder and harder to eat my Pho. This stuff is melting my mouth. It wasn't a hot that burned all the way down. This was just killing my mouth. OK, maybe I put too much hot sauce. But it was some good stuff.

Overall I finished all my noodles but couldn't bring myself to polish off the broth as I normally do. It was just too spicy.
 
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