604 Foodtography

Where? Bo Laksa King’s Bubbles & Bits at 2546 E. Hastings St.

Opened up sometime during late summer 2010.

Who? With the Marketing-Communications department of VDL.

See previous dinner with MarCom at Burgoo.

When? September 16th, 2010.

Why? A pre-season meeting.

So when I was in Taiwan in August, Jeff left me a message saying that Bo had a new location on Hastings. That thought stayed with me until I came back, and when Cat asked for suggestions for us to meet and eat, I thought, Bo’s! Obviously we wouldn’t be going to the original Joyce Station location, but to the new sit-down eatery. Although the setting has changed, it’s benefited Bo greatly I think, as he’s given a full kitchen and can expand on his menu.

What? We ordered what felt like almost the entire menu.

Starting off with appetizers. Spicy squid ($5.75) – Blenched squid, onion, and garlic, cilantro, tossed in house made spicy lime vinaigrette.

What a way to start the meal, as most of us felt it was quite spicy. Not a too hot to handle, but definitely a little jolt to the senses. Chock full of spices and little ingredients, I think the sauce is what makes this a winner.

Ordered 2 large Roti Canai’s ($5.99 each) - Authentic South-East Asian pastry pancake served with curry chicken dipping sauce or condensed milk and sugar for sweet Roti.

Below shows just one order. Light, fluffy, not too oily and served with some rich curry chicken sauce!

Next up were the noodles, 2 orders of Pad Thai ($8.75) - Thai rice noodle, eggs, shrimps, extra firm tofu, Chinese chives, dried chilli peppers, banana flower, bean sprouts, preserved turnip, stir fry in house made traditional tamarind sauce.

There is a lot of stuff hidden underneath, and Bo keeps the spices & toppings as separate as possible for those who are picky eaters. Yes, it’s made with real tamarind sauce, not the westernized red ketchup-y sauce.

Now for the main dish and what made Bo famous!

LAKSA!! ($7.50)

We ordered 3 of these to share between the 10 of us, two of them with yellow noodles and one with vermicelli. I’m partial to the yellow noodles as I’m not a big fan of vermicelli in general. Needless to say, this was gobbled up pretty quickly on the table.

Just as a visual reference, this is what the table looked like. Full of food being shared left and right.  But wait, what’s the two curry plates on the bottom?

The first was a Chicken Curry ($7.50) – Marinated bone in chicken slowly cooked with Bo’s special curry spice, served with coconut rice and spicy cucumber salad, served with rice.

Cat, savouring the smell of curry wafting up to her nose.

Pork curry ($7.50) – Marinated pork belly slowly cooked in house made curry sauce, served with rice.

By this time, we’ve already worked our way through 5 appetizers, 5 noodle dishes, and 2 curries. However, I was sorely tempted to try out some dessert, and Tiff said they had some Durian Semolian Cake ($2.99). Smelling durian makes me want to blarrrgh, but she assured me that it wouldn’t smell. So I thought, might as well.

When it came, there was no smell. I picked it up close to my nose, and there was no smell. I took a tiny bite, and there was no smell. What the hell?! Has Bo conquered the almighty durian? Or was it just how the cake was prepared? In any case, the taste was very minimal, the cake itself was a bit crumbly.

The ratio between portion and price is slightly in favour of the portion side. Between 10 of us and all the items we ordered (Laphet Thoke (fermented tea leaf salad) not pictured, it either got attacked before I took a picture, or I was busy eating and forgot), the bill was insane! Just $10 each after tax. The opportunity to try out 8 different items on the menu for only $10….granted it was on MarCom expense, but still.