North vs South Vietnam
June 2, 2016 4:42 PM   Subscribe

 
My favorite soup!
posted by nikoniko at 4:58 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Now I want it.
posted by codacorolla at 5:44 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I would argue that any consideration of North vs. South in relation to pho is irrelevant, considering how artificial and historically specific the North/South divide actually was...

...but the essay was really quite good, and now I just want some Phở đặc biệt with extra tendon.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:05 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I mostly learned about pho Saigon style, with lots of vegetable additions (a whole industry developed locally providing the herbs for restaurants) and two or three sauces, but then I found a place with the most complex and savory broth . . . and nothing else was needed. The process of making the broth sounds absurdly complicated. I like sriracha sauce alright but never saw any use for it in pho. I have some Filipina friends that would violently disagree though.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:07 PM on June 2, 2016


I love Pho. Thanks for the link.
posted by jonmc at 6:08 PM on June 2, 2016


Headline in tomorrow's tronc news: Mefites Searching for Vietnamese Broth Cause Pho-nomenon!
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:10 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


Pho PHAQ:

- Where do I find restaurants serving this dish?

In the Pho-nebook

- What do you call the Communist state-produced soup with potato-flour noodles?

Pho-ny

- What do you call the scent that entices one to buy this soup?

Pho-remones
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:12 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


I wonder when tendon and tripe made it into pho? My favorite.
posted by joeyh at 6:16 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


You know that pho is pronounced with a short u sound for the o, which makes your punchlines:

fun-book

funny

fu-remones?
posted by Huck500 at 6:17 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


Little Saigon in the OC is like 3 minutes from my house, but I ALREADY STARTED DINNER, DAMN IT!
posted by Huck500 at 6:18 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I wonder when tendon and tripe made it into pho? My favorite.

I love tendon, but I've always found tripe to be too chewy for my taste. My favorite is usually a combination of beef and beef tendon. I always judge a pho place by whether or not their tendon is good.

Man, I live about a ten minute walk from three different pho places I haven't tried yet...
posted by teponaztli at 6:23 PM on June 2, 2016


By the way, I'm going to be spending the rest of the thread reading in envy of anyone who has pho available anywhere near home. I should probably learn to cook it sometime, but preparing my own tripe would be a bridge too far.
posted by joeyh at 6:28 PM on June 2, 2016


Just want to share we have a pho place here in Oakland called Pho King.

Good article!
posted by latkes at 7:05 PM on June 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


preparing my own tripe would be a bridge too far.

I'll say! You need that to live!
posted by teponaztli at 7:11 PM on June 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


A lot of places have meatballs in their pho, when did that start?
posted by gucci mane at 7:26 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm still surprised nobody in Brooklyn has opened Phogedaboutit…
posted by adamsc at 7:48 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


ok just one thing real quick, it's pronounced like "phuh", which makes most of these puns incorrect, and I blame my fellow Vietnamese for buying into the pun game. GAH! (but phogedaboutit works because New Yorkers actually say "fuh")
posted by numaner at 7:52 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


If there are two things that New Orleans has*, it's 1.) a significant Vietnamese population and 2.) a lot of options for pho. There is literally a corner store across the street from my house where I can buy pho most days of the week. This is a blessed life.

* turns out New Orleans has many more than 2 things. I just went and counted.
posted by komara at 7:58 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


This is probably sacrilege but my favorite pho restaurant offers, among its many meat choices, shrimp and pork wontons. It's my two favorite types of soup combined and it is AMAZING.
posted by skycrashesdown at 8:08 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


skycrashesdown: we're talking about pho here, not phobominations.
posted by komara at 8:09 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


There's a pho place in the fancy burbs called "What The Pho" that makes me crack up every time I pass by it.

The best pho I've ever had was in a restaurant shaped like a boat (yelp link) that is apparently the oldest pho shop in Seattle! Now I wanna unfreeze the cup of broth I bought from them and stashed in case of pho-mergency.
posted by zinful at 8:10 PM on June 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


i tried doing the "fuh" thing but nobody around here knew what i was talking about, so i stopped before i became the "well, actually..." guy

so it's foe, i guess.
posted by indubitable at 8:32 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yes I know how it's pronounced, and for the purposes of humor I just don't care, pholl stop.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:34 PM on June 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Thank you so much for posting this!

I loved the article, and the connections it drew between modern Vietnamese history and the development of pho. I also got a real kick out of the references to the linguistic exchange between Vietnamese and Chinese, with pho's original name of nguu nhuc phan == 牛肉粉 and fried crullers banh quay == 油炸鬼. Knowing Cantonese, often when I listen to people speaking Vietnamese I almost feel like I ought to understand what they're talking about and it's a very surreal/frisson-y but enjoyable feeling.
posted by coolname at 8:45 PM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Love pho, great article. Now I'm hungry again!
posted by arcticseal at 10:05 PM on June 2, 2016


Phở is a magnificent thing, but if you haven't dived down the glorious lemongrassy chilli madness that is Bún bò Huế, pork blood and all, then you really ought to.

I speak with the zeal of a recent convert.
posted by prismatic7 at 10:50 PM on June 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Let's all line up and have some together!

C'mon everybody: pho queue!
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:47 AM on June 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


If you're ever in Chicago, just hop off the Red Line at Argyle and pho abounds. I was always a Tank Noodle person myself, but there's no wrong answer there.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:49 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't care for meat in my pho. My favorite local place (Pho Bistro) has "Pho Just Noodles", which is divine - even if they didn't make it past the first round of Northern Virginia Magazine's NoVA Wars: Pho Edition.
posted by candyland at 5:37 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


What is the best D.C./Maryland-adjacent pho? I come from komara's land of phobundance and haven't found my spot yet.
posted by Night_owl at 6:26 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Great article. One of my numerous local Pho stops in my neighbourhood serves a full vegetarian version (the broth is vegetarian as well) that is fabulous but I do prefer to inject any Pho I eat with sriracha but that is true outside of Pho as well.

Pronounciation is often brought up. I've heard phuh and phao (from native Vietnames speakers but pronounciation differences are probably regional as they often are world wide) as well as the mispronounced pho.

A friend of mine seems to absorb Pho through her entire body as she smells of it afterward. If this was a common thing I'd try to go into business developing Dephodorant.
posted by juiceCake at 6:56 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


A place opened up near Porter Square in Cambridge a couple of years ago, and their original signage said the name was "Pho Cup", but I guess someone finally clued the city into the pronunciation, because a few weeks later the name had been changed to something more socially acceptable. I did manage to take a picture of the sign before it came down, but damned if I can find it at the moment.
posted by briank at 7:14 AM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


TheWhiteSkull, Northern and Southern Vietnam have very different culinary traditions; broadly speaking you can culinarily divide the country in three: North, Central, South; Central and South are both in the 1954 - 1975 South Vietnam. Yes, the partition was a fraud, but it was effected along a natural fault line.
posted by grubby at 9:09 AM on June 3, 2016


What is the best D.C./Maryland-adjacent pho? I come from komara's land of phobundance and haven't found my spot yet.

Yay new people! So if you're in the heart of DC, I highly recommend Pho Viet, which is a 10 minute walk from Columbia Heights station on 14th street (my uncle owns it, but it's unbiasedly very good pho). If you're in upper Maryland, head to Rockville for Pho Nom Nom, where they also have excellent banh mi (the Vietnamese sandwich). If you're anywhere in North VA, head to Eden Center or the surrounding areas, literally any pho there is decent but I don't go there enough to really know what the best would be.
posted by numaner at 9:12 AM on June 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


Andrea Nguyen (the author of this article) is awesome. I highly recommend her cookbooks for anyone interested in Viet/Asian cooking. Her blog too--always so fun and informative. If you like Kenji Lopez-Alt, but think he doesn't do enough unusual Asian recipes and techniques, or share enough adorable mom stories, Viet World Kitchen should be right up your alley.

Also, Tank Noodle is really overrated (in my opinion). I always go to Airplane Noodle on the opposite end of Argyle. They actually rebranded as Uptown Pho recently, but they'll always be Airplane Noodle to me.

There's also a restaurant around here called Pho Loan. We make jokes about what kind of strange circumstances you would have to be in, to take out a loan for a bowl of pho.
posted by gueneverey at 9:57 AM on June 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a pho today."
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:41 AM on June 3, 2016


Blessed to have ~4 local shops within easy distance from me. More a southern style (bean sprouts and squeezed lime personally) with a simple rinse of hoisin sauce to deepen the flavor profile.
posted by Hasteur at 11:12 AM on June 3, 2016


I always go to Airplane Noodle on the opposite end of Argyle. They actually rebranded as Uptown Pho recently, but they'll always be Airplane Noodle to me.

If their slogan isn't "Uptown Pho you up, Uptown Pho you up" they are blowing it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:40 PM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I was in the middle of reading this article when I realized that I had bún xào chay for lunch on Wednesday, beef tamales on Thursday, and kimchi bibimbap today. Houston can be a frustrating city but mmm, the food.

Also, if you're in Houston and looking for phở, Huynh is a personal favorite that is well-regarded overall.
posted by librarylis at 7:18 PM on June 3, 2016


If you're in upper Maryland, head to Rockville for Pho Nom Nom, where they also have excellent banh mi (the Vietnamese sandwich).

Yeah, Rockville! I have really fond memories of eating at Pho 75 (a little further down Rockville Pike) before going to class at Montgomery College, back when I was a fresh-faced youngster. That's where I learned to like salty lemonade.
posted by teponaztli at 8:37 PM on June 3, 2016


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