Traveling Around Asia in LA, Part II

While the rest of the country expects it to actually be hot in the summer and cold in the winter, we frivolous Angelenos plan food crawls without considering the weather. This was exemplified recently when I originally planned the Mac & Cheese crawl for September and it turned out to be one of the hottest days of the years.  I had to reschedule for November. And then when my friend, the Food Woody and I planned out the Gaysian Noodles Crawl, we didn’t actually think it’d be cold enough to just want to hang around one noodles joint. With a rainy forecast, we decided to try only one of the restaurants, the newly opened Unphogettable in West Hollywood.

Anyone can get a great bowl of pho in South El Monte but it’s almost an Herculean effort to find edible Asian food in WeHo. The six of us shared two bowls of pho, spring rolls, bun mi and wraps. Anywhere else (in the SGV), this would have been enough food but I have to say I could have done with a bowl of pho to myself. Sadly, each bowl looked hardly filled and was all broth.

The Royal rolls were stuffed with pork sausage. One for the Food Woody team. I probably could have used more than the two bites I had.

The vermicelli bowls are filled with your choice of protein. I like hanging with people who can’t get enough pork. I have to say all the vegetables we experienced so far were very fresh. Maybe the Westside perspective isn’t so bad sometimes.

As mentioned, both bowls of pho seemed sadly lacking. I was pleased though with the quality of the food in general. The combo pho even had some tripe which I didn’t think a Westernized pho joint would even attempt to do. When you take the hoisin and hot sauce out of their tacky plastic bottles and put them into real containers, expect your bowl of pho to go up to $8-$9.

The most fun we had was wrapping our own wraps. You’re given a bunch of stuff (we opted for shrimp) and the thin sheets of rice paper are separated by plastic plates. You can roll away to your heart’s content.

Overall, the food is pretty good. I just don’t know how I feel about paying nearly double for it.

Unphogettable

8543 Santa Monica Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90069

(424) 249-3825