Cafe Trang in Park City offered a $10 Groupon for $20 worth of food so we decided to give it a try. We arrived at the restaurant on a Friday about 6pm. There were only 3 tables occupied which seemed kind of odd to me for a Friday at dinnertime, but summer is the slow season for Park City. Cafe Trang is also located away from the busier Park City Main Street area which may also be a reason for less customers.
Anyway, we were greeted and seated promptly. The menu is huge, several pages long. It took my friend and I longer than usual to decide what we wanted because there were so many choices and many sounded really good. There were Vietnamese specialties, noodle dishes, soups, fire pots, seafood dishes, fondues, vegetarian meals, curries and more…oh my! My friend loves curry, so opted to get the Pan
aeng Curry ($13.95) made with coconut cream, green peas, potatoes and kaffir lime leaf. I like house specialties and have been wanting to try an authentic pho – a very special Vietnamese noodle soup infused with cinnamon, anise, onion and gingers. I ordered the Pho Hai-Noi ($10.25) which came with beef, tendons and beef balls (not what you’re thinking), but they also have a pho with just beef only. I wanted the full experience pho version. And we also ordered on this warm summer day, two glasses of Thai Tea – strong, sweet and yummy.
We didn’t have a long wait for our food to arrive since the place was nearly empty. My ginormous bowl of pho landed in
front of me in all its glory. The pho is served with sprouts, jalapenos, lime, hoisin sauce, chili sauce and Thai basil; you can add as much or as little as you want to the soup.
The curry bowl, fantastically fragrant, also was a large serving which made my friend very happy :-)…(drool). I was very pleased with my pho, even with the tendons which were tender. The broth was very flavorful by itself, but even better with all the added condiments. It took me a long time to finish my pho which I don’t think would have been possible if we had ordered and ate appetizers first. I think this large serving would have been the equivalent of 3 or 4 servings in Vietnam. My friend love the the curry which I tasted and thought was very good compared to other Panaeng curries we have had before in other restaurants.
Overall, we thought the service was good and the food fantastic. The prices are very reasonable for a Park City restaurant and especially for the amount of food you get and its high quality. In my previous restaurant review of the Gateway Grille, which is Kamas and not even in Park City, I paid $13 for a lunch entree which was not nearly half as good and much less food than what I received at Cafe Trang. We definitely would return to Cafe Trang for lunch or dinner, regardless of whether we had a Groupon or not.
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