Central Avenue Update Part 3: Phoever to Al Baraka

The Churn for Friday, October 18, 2024

In this week’s edition of The Heavy Table’s Churn newsletter, we get back to the hustle and bustle of Central Avenue and - in one evening - visit Vietnam, Ethiopia, Thailand, Japan, Honduras, and the Middle East.

WACSO / Heavy Table

Also! If you haven't yet checked out the Heavy Table newsletter archive, it indexes about 300,000 words of content and photography from the past two years of publishing.

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CENTRAL AVENUE CHECKLIST UPDATE, PART THREE
We continue our update-it-all visit to Central Avenue and dine at Phoever, Adama and Awash, Jasmine Thai, Restaurante Hondureño, and Al Baraka.
By M.C. Cronin, Becca Dilley, James Norton, and WACSO

WACSO / Heavy Table

This time out, four out of the five places we hit had turned over since last we visited Central Ave. Somewhere over the course of the last nine years a couple of Thai joints had now became slightly more fluid versions of Thai joints (one leaning Japanese, the other Vietnamese); an Americanized Chinese place had converted to an Ethiopian restaurant; and a classic American grill had transformed into a Honduran spot. That’s seven different types of cuisine rotating in and out.

It’s enough to make your head spin. It’s a reminder of how difficult the restaurant business can be. And it’s some kind of miracle that we have access such a wide variety of cuisines without ever having to turn our steering wheels. – M.C. Cronin 

WACSO / Heavy Table

Phoever | 4022 Central Avenue NE | Columbia Heights, Minn. | 763.208.8754

Depending on which sign you believe, Phoever is either “Vietnamese Cuisine,” “Thai Asia Fusion,” or simply a “Restaurant & Thai Food.” So, if you’re in the market for something in a Southeast Asian dish, you’re very likely in the right place. Maybe.

WACSO / Heavy Table

Sheer fabric parasols hang upside down from the ceiling. They’re colorfully patterned with butterflies, orchids, and other bright floral patterns and act something like chandeliers. If you had Instagram wall on your bingo card, you can check that off. This one has a backdrop consisting of a veil of green and purple faux ivy tendrils and a LED sign that says, “I [heart] to eat Phoever.”

WACSO / Heavy Table

These are all fine touches that serve to dress up what might otherwise have been a standard issue Asian joint (as portended by their rather generic outside signage). They took a drab space with a drop ceiling with fluorescent lighting and did a little more. So, A for effort. Better than we can say for many of the other places we’ve visited of a similar ilk. We just wish the raw sugar cane machine was running. That seemed promising and out of the ordinary. - M.C.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

The first question that any reasonable diner would ask about Phoever is self-explanatory: “Well, how’s the pho?” The answer, happily, is “pretty good.” The P2 (Rare Beef and Meatballs - $13) boasted a simple but pleasingly balanced and star anise-kissed broth with tender beef and firm (but not rubbery) sliced meatballs. This is pho on the minimalist side of things, but it’s fully nourishing and pleasant.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

The restaurant’s Grilled Pork Banh Mi ($7.50) takes a similar approach - there’s not much to it, and that’s not a problem. The bread was pleasingly soft and remarkably crackly, the meat tender and flavorful, and the jalapeño-boosted heat formidable but not overwhelming. It’s basic - in a good way.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

The super simple Chicken Pad Thai ($13) maybe errs on the side of too basic for its own good - some heat and/or funk and/or tang would’ve benefited this bland and underpowered dish. 

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

We were feeling squirrely so we ordered a Durian Coffee ($7.50), a durian smoothie mixed with Vietnamese coffee. The proprietor told us a story about how a previous preparation of the coffee had led a customer to worry about a possible gas leak, and we get it: the blending of the smoothie touched off an aerosolization of the natural gas and/or onion-y aspects of the fruit, briefly clouding the restaurant with an extremely noteworthy odor.

Our first sip of the drink was distressingly like sucking down liquified rotten garlic, but when we mixed it around a little bit and got more of the sweet cream and bitter coffee involved, a bit of reason was restored. Still: recommended for durian lovers only.

Far more conventional, but excellent: the restaurant’s Vietnamese Iced Coffee ($7.50) was somewhere between coffee on ice and a coffee milkshake - rich, cold, sweet, and creamy. Arguably too sweet but we were too busy slamming these things to argue. – James Norton

WACSO / Heavy Table

Adama Restaurant | 3970 Central Avenue NE | Columbia Heights, Minn. | 763.220.2897 

Silence. Absolute, stone, solitary-confinement-ward silence. With only one other table occupied in the entire place, every word we spoke echoed off the walls and became the most important sound in the space. Adama made the reading room at the local library seem like a New York City rave circa 1998.

WACSO / Heavy Table

Restaurant owners, please take heed. Silence is not the ambiance you want to create in your restaurant. A $25 Bluetooth speaker weakly spitting out Starship’s “We Built this City (on Rock and Roll)” would be better than dead silence. Ok, that’s not true. It would have to be anything other than inarguably the worst song ever recorded, but I believe my point is made. Moving on.

WACSO / Heavy Table

The sole cook, a grandmotherly figure wearing a weightlifting belt hefting various dishes and pots and pans in and out of the kitchen, set the tone. She clearly had that kitchen on lock and did not put on the air of a person who could be trifled with. She was also exactly the kind of woman you would want to prepare the comforting, stewed, spiced, heaps of goodness that arrived on a platter at our table.

WACSO / Heavy Table

It was perplexing then, that she would put up with our server who either seemed extremely high or just had a general demeanor of someone who wanted to be anywhere else. But even with the stark atmosphere and service, the sheer delightfulness of the food here makes a visit not just worth it, but mandatory. - M.C.

Every once in a while, an order comes to your table and you think: “My God, this is perfect.” That’s what happened at Adama Restaurant when our Combo 1 ($42) arrived in its resplendent and multifaceted beauty. The platter came with doro wot, alecha misir wot, tibs, keye wot, collard greens, and spiced cabbage, served on injera with rolls of injera for each diner to tear and use as combination utensils / delicious bread. 

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

We’ve eaten at dozens of Ethiopian and other East African restaurants around town, and this dish has to rank near or at the top of the list - everything tasted light, fresh, impeccably seasoned, and made with freshly ground and compounded spice blends that just crackled with intensity and depth of flavor.

The tibs in particular had a spicy complexity that was like a thunderbolt in terms of impact, and rolled on for minutes after each bite in terms of its pleasing aftertaste. The collard greens, too, were just about perfect - not soggy or overcooked, nor too tough or under, but lively and bright and bursting with a clean, joyful flavor. The injera tasted fresh and delicate, with a mild hit of vinegar rather than the sometimes fierce impact that you’ll sometimes encounter.