Phở is a Viet person's soul food. It is our cure for cancer! ... well, not quite... but it certainly is our cure for everything else: the common cold, the hangover, or even a bad breakup. Like the song says: "there's a tear in my beer cos i'm crying for you dear", there are plenty of nights when we Saigonese go to the local Phở joint, inhale the aroma of beef noodles to forget about a heart-ache!
In reality, the concept of Pho is quite simple: rice noodles steeped in beef broth, added with condiments such as green onions, basil and cilantro, along with a few squirts of hoisin and sriracha sauce and ... voila! a soup that smells (and tastes) like nirvana.
Have you driven down Bolsa Ave lately? Notice how many Pho Restaurants there are? (a crude search on Yahoo Local! gives 174 results just for Westminster, 178 for Garden Grove and 169 for Santa Ana). Check my math folks but that's over 500 restaurants with Pho in its name within a 25miles radius of the area defined as Little Saigon. Each restaurant, I can assure you, has its own recipe for how to make pho.
As the result, the epicurious will have a hard time visiting them all - but it's a task worth undertaking. Somebody has to do the hard work, right? A Vietnamese living in this area also has what I call phonitis when travelling outside of the area (even if "outside" means well within the borders of Southern California). Phonitis is a disease whereby the person searches aimlessly for a pho restaurant whenever they are in a strange land. With today's technology, they would search desperately for pho in its name on the GPS, and yell at the hubby to take sharp turns in order to get there before closing time. After all, restaurants outside of Little Saigon are not used to being open past 10pm. Once inside the doors, the person settles happily at a table to order the largest bowl, only to start criticizing everything even before the waiter puts the soup on the table: where is my plate of bean sprouts? can I have a few more sprigs of basil please? no, not that type of Thai basil, the Viet type! what? you don't have it? ok - fine, give me more cilantro please. You have that don't you? and lime! lime please, not lemon but lime for my soup!
On the way out, the person would complain about the 15% tip that most non-Viet waitstaff would certainly be expecting. Within minutes of leaving, the person would whip out their smart phone and Yelp! about how bad the Pho was, even as they were enjoying the lingering taste of beef noodles on their tongue.Until next time friends... eat well and stay curious!
-Joie DeVivre
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