“Waddya’ think?” I said to my wife, Annie, as we approached You & Mee Noodle House in Boulder.
She shrugged.
“Looks like another nondescript Asian restaurant to me.”
Annie and I were hungry. The kids were ravenous. It was no time to quibble over drab exteriors and the potential for too much grease and MSG.
We entered the doors, and 40 minutes later, waddling back onto the sidewalk in the heart of the student district, we understood You & Mee had become our new go-to Asian place in Boulder.
There was nothing nondescript about the food.
First of all, there’s the pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup with the aromatic, heady broth. Most pho broths are nearly distillates of beef, and most of them too come laden with different cuts of cow.
You can go that route at You & Mee — I did, and it was very good. But Annie the vegetarian, for once, could order pho with a vegetarian broth (and tofu instead of meat). She did, and while the broth lacked the perfume punch of the meat version, it was good.
With pho, garnishes are key, and You & Mee offers the classics: bean sprouts, basil, cilantro, fish sauce, hot sauce, lime wedges, jalapeño peppers and tamarind.
In addition to a few nightly specials, You & Mee offers just several styles of entrees every day: Pho, Bun (a pile of rice noodles with various garnishes), Com (a plate of steamed rice with accompaniments) and Banh mi, a Vietnamese sandwich containing meat (traditionally pork, but You & Mee offers chicken, tofu and beef as well).
We tried them all, and in addition to the pho, were most fond of the Bun, dressed with a sweet fish sauce, ribboned with fresh basil and speckled with crushed peanuts.
The other You & Mee highlight is the dumpling menu. The place offers a bunch of different dumplings, from vegetarian to pork to fish. One of them, served Shanghai style, comes in its own domed, metal serving container.
We tasted most of the dumplings, and all of them were excellent.
Top off the meal with a boba milk tea, a sweet tea that comes with little gelatinous balls of tapioca. Sounds bad, but it’s good.
One of the best things about You & Mee is the price.
A small pho filled with beef, which was enough for dinner, was $4.95. That’s cheap.
Douglas Brown: 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com
You & Mee Noodle House
Vietnamese and other Asian cuisines. 1311 Broadway, Boulder, 720-214-0585. Open 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. every day. $1.50-$6.95. Visa and Mastercard.
Front burner: Very cheap, very good Asian food, with an emphasis on Vietnamese.
Back burner: Parking can be an issue in this student-heavy part of Boulder.
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