Cafe East

Authentic Vietnamese Home Cooking

Cafe East - Authentic Vietnamese Home Cooking

http://www.cafeeastpho.co.uk

Muffins Cafe - Food, Jewellery, Gifts, Cards - East Hoathly, East ...

Muffins Café of East Hoathly offers a charming, atmospheric and sophisticated licensed café experience.

Muffins Cafe provides a unique mix of good food and drink, with an eclectic combination of contemporary and rarely seen precious fashion led designer jewellery, as well as an array of other unique gifts, prints, furniture, greetings cards and home furnishings.

Settle yourself in our relaxing café, have lunch with a glass of wine or beer, alternatively try our selection of lovely sandwiches and Panini's with our superb coffee and tea.

If that's not enough how about indulging in our selection of special home made cakes and gateaux.

Then browse our exceptional jewellery selection sourced from individual designers from all over the world.

Restaurant review: Café East | Life and style | The Guardian

All that said, a Sunday lunch at Café East in Surrey Quays made me quite nostalgic for those wretched mornings after the night before.

For I am in no doubt that the food served at this sweet, brisk Vietnamese canteen – crunchy summer rolls stuffed with crisp vegetables, pristine seafood and rice vermicelli, huge steaming bowls of a deeply aromatic beef broth called pho, bobbing with slivers of meat and wide rice noodles – would prove a perfect cure.

To start, order banh cuon (rolls of slippery steamed rice pastry encasing minced pork and chopped mushrooms) or goi cuon – the aforementioned summer rolls.

Alongside comes a platter of greenery – mint and coriander, basil and something with a profound anise flavour, leaves of iceberg lettuce for flavourless crunch, and a small bowl of finely chopped fresh red chillies, to give it a bit of oomph.

That aside, Café East is the best kind of cheap restaurant: a place of emotional safety.

Café East | Restaurants in Rotherhithe, London

Ignore the basic decor, just taste the pho noodle soup at this Vietnamese hot-spot in the unlikely setting of a car park.

Once you’ve managed to find Café East – tucked in a far corner of the car park of the huge Surrey Quays Shopping Centre – you might well think you’ve happened upon a South-east Asian workers’ canteen.

It’s effectively one big room, with cream-painted walls but absolutely no attempt at decoration.

The big utilitarian square tables are a little too high for the chairs, and are packed with happily guzzling South-east Asian customers.

Two points to remember: staff don’t supply tap water, only bottled; and if you’re walking or driving here, it’s best to enter the car park via the little (quite hidden) entrance after the main route into the complex, Surrey Quays Road.