Sunset Pho Caffe Sun 6/24 @ 7:15 pm

In my younger years, I spent time in Zagreb, Croatia. C2 has spent time there, too. I’m sure other LTHers have been there. It’s a beautiful city.

And you can’t spend much time in Zagreb without encountering their three popular grilled meats — Ražnjići, Ćevapčići and Pljeskavice.

Which is why I wanted to try Sunset Pho. Sure, there’s a good handful of places in town for Croatian or Serbian grilled meats, but how many infuse them into Vietnamese cuisine?

Check Please, on WTTW, recently ran a segment on Sunset Pho.

And, although not officially a GNR, it has gotten plenty of LTH love.

It’s almost always better to have a well-sized group for ordering power; that’s one of the strengths of LTH get-togethers. But groups that get too big can sometimes limit conversation and interactions; for this, we’ll limit it to ten folks.

Let me know here if you’re interested.

Sunset Pho Caffe
5726 N Western Ave
Chicago, IL 60659
(773) 275-2327
Sunday, June 24
7:15 PM

Hi,

I plan to come!

Regards,
Cathy

Cabbagehead and I will join you. Thanks!

I’m in. Looking forward to going. I didn’t know this was an Evanston lunch group event. I thought it was just an open dinner invitation.

moetchandon wrote:I’m in. Looking forward to going. I didn’t know this was an Evanston lunch group event. I thought it was just an open dinner invitation.

LOL - is there any effective difference? All are always welcome, right?

=R=

I wan't impressed with the Croatian spring roll as a carry out, but maybe live it's better. As I understood, not really that much Croatian.

Hoping it will be better fresh/live I'm game. I love Vietnamese food anyway.

Mr. X and I are in!

Hello! I would like to join.

yourhungrygf wrote:Hello! I would like to join.

Hi,

Welcome!

Does gf in the screen name suggest you are gluten free?

Regards,
Cathy2

I am happy that I will be able to join youse.

Giovanna

So, that looks like ten people, and we wanted to limit it to ten, for some element of manageability (whatever that means). If anyone else is interested, we'll start a wait list. Looking forward to seeing the group there.

I won't be able to join you, but I clicked on this thread as it came up as the most recent one and reading the first paragraph, I thought I must have mis-clicked, as how in the hell is cevapcici related to a place called Sunset Pho Caffe? I have reasonable experience with Croatian food, having spent about three months there and living next door for five years (and cevapi are a regular menu item at Chez Binko). This is one of the more unexpected culinary-mash-ups I've encountered and I am intrigued and will be looking forward to the reviews.

If you look at the Check Please segment in the original post, the woman running the kitchen is Vietnamese, and her husband is Croatian.

nr706 wrote:If you look at the Check Please segment in the original post, the woman running the kitchen is Vietnamese, and her husband is Croatian.

I did watch it. I was wincing when he was complaining about the greasy Vietnamese sausages that "don't taste so good, at least in my book" before his wife game him The Look.

Well, I guess nobody took pictures of our meal. As always, I had a good time in good company.

The food was good to very good. I'm interested in trying some more of the Vietnamese items in the future. The wife/chef seems to have a light hand with those dishes. The banh xeo was very well executed [altho I wish people would dry the leaf lettuce before it is brought to the table... wet lettuce completely swamps the crispy pancake]. I did not run into any of those floury-doughy spots you find in lesser examples. The chicken/ginger salad was well-balanced and tasty; I suspect the cabbage was recently chopped or chopped for the order, as opposed to mixed up ahead of time. It made a good difference in the salad.

We also had salmon in a clay pot... I can't find it in the online menu... I've had preparations like this before, and I thought this was nicely balanced - not too much sweetness, not too much funk.

We did a seafood platter with 'Sunset Yummy sauce (butter garlic)' that was tasty. Seafood quality was reasonable, sauce kept vampires away for days.

Pho was good. I think there are more sophisticated/complex broths out there, but I actually enjoyed the chef's restrained approach.

Giovanna

I'll agree with all the above, although the seafood on the seafood platter was only average. But the "Yummy Sauce" it came with was truly yummy, and had us getting extra bread (complimentary) to sop it up. Frog's legs in their sauce were particularly good, though. I especially enjoyed the Ćevapčići platter, with kamjak and ajvar ... undoubtedly the best Ćevapčići anyone could ever expect in a Vietnamese restaurant. And Zelimir, the Croatian half of the ownership, was a gregarious host, offering slivovitz for all. It was a very fun evening.

Hi,

To keep everyone informed, we had two seafood platters: one filled with crawfish and other was a mix of shrimp, mussels and scallops with everything ordered by weight.

I really liked all the sauces accompanying the frogs legs, seafood platters and salmon. Whatever was left was sopped up with rice or bread. I was not alone enjoying the sauces.

The only aspect I was not pleased was the dessert selection. Nothing particularly Croatian or Vietnamese or perhaps even made in-house. It was there to meet the expectation of a dessert and not very well thought out.

Final tally was $28.05 per person.

Regards,
Cathy2

Giovanna wrote:Well, I guess nobody took pictures of our meal. As always, I had a good time in good company.

Not so! I got photos of most of what we ordered and posted in the main thread.

OMG, my apologies. I was a no-show, it got deleted from my calendar and I missed it. I keep my calendar in a spreadsheet, and sometimes a fat finger wills change a cell and I won't realize what I did. Again, my apologies. Looking at my calendar, I was sitting home doing nothing that evening.

And even worse, there was a limit of people, so maybe someone else couldn't make it.

Is my memory correct that this the food was all vietnamese except for spring rolls with croatian sausage? Oh, I see, you got Cevapcici platter. Anything else?

This has really ruined my day/week/month. This was the place I wanted to go more than any other event. Now I'll have to go by myself to try it out for the ethnic dining group I lead. Anybody want to go back?

Again, mea culpa.