Huong's BYO Restaurant, West End

The Friday before last I went to Huong's Restaurant for dinner.  Huong's is a Vietnamese/Chinese, and more recently, Thai Restaurant that has been in West End for as long as I can remember.  I have been going there with some degree of regularity since I moved back to West End at the age of approximately 12.  Lately, whenever I go there, I get a sense of nostalgia, and I always feel welcome there.  While Huong's may not be the absolute best Asian restaurant around, it was for those reasons I returned there.  On this occasion, I ordered prawn toast (as I often do) and something that the menu called "Chicken Curry Noodle Soup".  I'll start with the prawn toast.  Huong's prawn toast is more expensive than most places, but this is due to the fact that the servings are larger.  This might seem like a positive, and I guess in a sense it is.  But the purpose of an entree is to whet one's appetite, not spoil it.  Sometimes Huong's prawn toast can do just that.  On this occasion, the toast was cooked perhaps a little longer than usual as it was darker and crunchier, but it wasn't burnt.  Overall, it was comparable to just about any other prawn toasts out there, which was fine by me.  On to the noodle soup.  I can't recall ever having noodle soup at Huong's before, but based on probability, it is possible that I have.  I was expecting a more or less standard Chinese chicken noodle soup that was just a little spicier than usual.  What I got surprised me, but not in an entirely unwelcome way.  It was a chicken laksa.  I don't know why the menu didn't state this, but I'll move along to describing it.  The broth was fine.  I've certainly had more flavoursome and spicy laksas in the past, but it was reasonable overall.  The chicken itself came in large chunks; larger than I've ever seen in a noodle soup, and more akin to the pieces of chicken one would find in an Indian curry.  This had me concerned at first, but once I took my first bite, my fears subsided.  It was cooked very well and even managed to absorb a decent amount of the flavour found in the soup itself.  A couple of bites contained a little gristle, but nothing to spoil the dish.  The choice of vegetables was more or less standard.  The only problem being that the onions were sliced so thinly that it was almost impossible to leave them out from the mouthfuls of noodles I took.  This might not be an issue for some, but I am of the minority opinion that onions do the opposite of enhancing a dish's flavour.  Having said that I can (and am often forced to) stomach them.  So while my meal was not without its flaws, it was a warming experience for a Winter's evening.