FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved

Food by Patrick Rengger After a long night with some travelling companions in Beijing spent drinking, misbehaving and then being interviewed by the not-so-secret police, what you need is another round o’ beer and some noodles. It is just the thing to soothe the nerves and allow you to talk out your frustrations and bring an eventful evening to a close. Beijing has many such noodle houses, if you know where to look, and while they are simple little affairs, with maybe half a dozen items on the menu, they are nonetheless pleasant places to eat and drink. Until now they have been a rarity in Calgary, and certainly off the beaten track, but with the final arrival of Pongo Noodle Bar and Beer House (528 17th Ave SW, ph. 209-1073), there is one that is right where the action is. Pongo offers a wide variety of choices on its menu, with an equally wide variety of standards. It also offers food until 2 a.m. most nights, and the kitchen is open until at least 4 a.m. Thursday through Saturday. Now there is an option other than pizza when you pile out of the Ship or stagger home from Detours on the weekend. All the food ranges between $4 to $10 so depending on your dish you can get quite a bargain. Options for appetizers include the ever present pot stickers, either vegetarian or pork ($5.95), the equally ubiquitous spring rolls ($4.25), Sake salmon ($6.95), crispy shrimp balls ($5.95) and Seoul Lettuce wraps ($6.25). Pick of the bunch would definitely be the Sake salmon, which combines the rich taste of salmon marinated sashimi, with winter melon, daikon, cucumber and jicama. The sake adds a delicious piquancy offsetting the salmon’s richness with its cutting taste. The wraps are filling, and with the hoisin sauce quite tasty, and include tofu and beef. But the pot stickers I found to be bland or at best inconsistent (I tried them on more than one occasion) and the shrimp balls would have been better left with the shrimp, so cardboard was their consistency and tasteless their effect. Pongo offers a variety of salads, as well as noodles, broth noodles and rice bowls. After dining there on several occasions with my companion I can heartily recommend the Korean bbq pork ($6.95) with its egg, suey choy, daikon, carrots and chile-hoisin paste, the hot and sour broth with bbq pork ($6.95) and the velvet chicken ($6.95). I cannot say the same for the coconut curry chicken stew ($7.95) which is so bland as to insult the very word curry. Many of the dishes at Pongo are in fact quite mild and lack spiciness, requiring frequent reachings for the hot sauce, but the curry is a particular problem. Likewise the pad thai ($8.95) was a bit of a flop, missing both the punch and the subtlety for which this dish is renowned. Other dishes offered include steamed sesame spinach salad ($4.95), Singapore noodles ($7.95) and Hanoi beef ($6.95) with rare beef, rice stick , sprouts, basil and lime. Pongo is equally accessible to smokers and the wheelchair-bound and is very well designed, unlike those noodle houses in Beijing. Its food is on the whole very good, with some excellent dishes and a few which are quite poor, although at three in the morning who is likely to be fussy? The variety is to be commended but the consistency of quality is dubious. Still given its locale and its hours it is bound to be busy. Reservations aren’t necessary, although it does get busy at lunch and right after the bars close.

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |