Reader Ethyn Tang writes to recommend Love Pho on 181 Swan Street at Church in Richmond, just a short walk from the East Richmond station.
"In Melbourne, Australia, when talking about Vietnamese food, there are three well known places to visit - Richmond, Footscray and Springvale. The Pho tastes just as good as it in Vietnam however hasn't been franchised as much as the States." - Thanks, Ethyn!
Pho and tacos don't have a tremendous amount in common. Both are often sold by street vendors, and are often considered peasant food. But they are also both delicious, and sometimes the best examples of each are available in the most unlikely places.
Thus, our newest project: yumtacos.com - a (probably never to be finished, as they open and close like, well, doors that open and close a whole lot) canonical map of California taco vans. Eventually, it may grow to encompass the entire western united states - and from there THE WORLD! Muahahaha.
But meanwhile, please do visit & digg the crap out of it, to help us get going. Thanks everybody!
cc-licensed photo of graffiti giving props to the great Mi Grullense trucks in the Bay Area compliments of
Flickr user Gypsy Rock
Reader Michael Toppa recently ate at Com Pho in Tokyo, which serves a "highly bastardized" pho - not bad, but not strictly pho.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a pho review. I have a backlog of a few I’ve been meaning to write (two more in Philly and one in San Mateo), and hopefully I’ll get to those soon. But for now I’ll weave my talk of pho with my ongoing talk of Tokyo. Pho is not easy to find in Japan. While the Vietnamese diaspora in Tokyo is big enough to sustain at least a few Vietnamese restaurants, you usually need to go to a specialty shop to get good pho. Thanks to the dazzling pho-king site, I was aware of at least one pho restaurant in Tokyo. Unfortunately, I never made it there - it would have been an excursion to get there from where we lived, and it just never made it to the top of the list. But I did stumble across the Com Pho stand in the basement of the Marunouchi Oazo shopping center, located across the street from Tokyo station. Com Pho is a chain with four locations in Tokyo, but I haven’t been to the others.
As a followup to our last Paris bulletin, readers Tom Bärlin & Jacob Nordfors write in with a recommendation for some excellent pho they've discovered in Paris:
Hi, me and a friend from Sweden spent some time in Paris last week. As being pho-fans we went to Song Huong at avenue de Choisy (metro: Tolbiac), just next to a bigger restaurant called Pho 14. If you are in Paris you don't want to miss this restaurant! It has no doubt the best phos in town.
Thanks to Stewf for the photograph. We ate there together; this was by far the best of the Pho Hoa chain I've ever tried, with amazing fried quail, great pho, very good rolls.
Several folks over on Chowhound are looking for California's best pho, in San Diego and elsewhere. Go over there and help them out!
It's been awhile since our last note on Vegas, which has a good number of decent pho houses and other Vietnamese restaurants. Reader VS from La Crescenta gives us the following info on recent goings-on:
Pho Kim Long is now, I think, owned by Chinese. Last time I was there I wanted Huu Tieu, which was no longer on the menu. I think they brought me some instant ramen.
As with other restaurants in the chain, Pho Hoa on Paradise Road is mediocre.
Pho So 1 may have changed to Korean hands – the menu now has a Hangul column, and the place is full of Korean patrons. The food is still excellent. Maybe if the owners have changed, at least they had the sense to keep the original chef. Or maybe the original owners are just trying to attract more clients. Koreans, after all, do love their beef.
Saigon Fragrance is a nice clean place around the corner from Pho So 1. I worry about them, though. Although the food and service are excellent, they're almost empty when I go in there.
Try Huu Tieu My Tho, in the same shopping center as Pho So 1, for southern-style Viet cuisine. A nice clean place that serves huu tieu, my nuoc, huu tieu my tho, banh canh ... but no pho (not even pho ga).
Finally, with much help from connoisseurs around the globe (and a little bit of help from me), Wikipedia has a reasonably complete article on pho - complete with recipe link. Yummy!
Our good friend Thy at Wandering Spoon sends us this example of "Viet ebonics," which she spotted at 8th and Clement in San Francisco.
We've added a small store using Amazon's new Astore program - you can now shop for Vietnamese cookbooks, tour guides and maps, and even a small selection of ingredients and cooking supplies. Take a look - their prices are pretty decent and most purchases qualify for free shipping. And every purchase you make helps pay for our hosting!
While pho is not their specialty, and they only serve pho tai, Rice Noodle (2836 Arden Way in Sacramento) does serve a better than decent bowl. I've been there several times before, and the friendly mom & pop joint has great bun and shrimp rolls. This time, however, I was in the mood for my favorite soup, and ordered a $5.25 (one-size-fits-all) bowl. The noodles were excellent and perfectly cooked, the steak rare, and the portion very generous. The broth was a bit more anisey than I'm used to, but I liked it a lot. The veggie plate included lime, chile, a nice purple basil and a little bit of sawtooth, plus a mound of sprouts, the only thing I don't like in my soup (but I do snack on them alongside the main course). All in all, I was impressed. If you find yourself out on that side of town, I think it'd be your only option for pho, and you won't be disappointed.
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KirkK's mmm-yoso San Diego food blog gives a terrific "retrospective" review of San Diego's best pho joints. He starts with Phuong Trang and goes down the list, samping eight different restaurants and including photos of the meal from each. He is surely a dedicated food journalist. The many comments in the thread add even more criticism and suggestions. Pho certainly does bring out the true believer in all of us!
Students on the beautiful tree-lined campus of CSU Sacramento are now lucky enough to have pho for lunch. Following the footsteps of a dozen other local eateries who have within the last 8 years moved outposts to the campus, Saigon Bay, a local pho joint, recently opened a small cafe just off the library quad. I saw it this weekend, and while it was unfortunately closed for the intersession break, I can attest that if they use the same stock as their Howe Avenue location, it'll be quite tasty. They also have some bun, sandwiches and various cold rolls on the menu, and have right in front a very pretty outdoor eating area under the shade of a few large redwoods (although there are acres of lawn all around and plenty of other nice spots to lunch).
The category picker is temporarily offline. Hopefully we'll be able to get it back within a day or so - sorry!
Peter's Mostly Food Blog is, well, a mostly-food related blog run by Peter. He writes about restaurants and cooking in and around Seattle and Bainbridge Island, and this past January he got anxious for pho. Unfortunately, out on the island, he'd have to drive to Bremerton or take the ferry in to Seattle, neither of which would have immediately fulfilled his needs. As he says, the local Chinese restaurant attempts pho but does not quite succeed, and anyway they don't make it on the weekends and he wanted to take his kids to a nice filling pho supper. So, first he tried to make his own, and then he got lucky - a brand-new pho restaurant opened in Poulsbo, just a few miles north on Hwy 3.
Peter gives Pho T&N very high marks, and says the rolls are decent and the pho itself excellent.
Reader Pho-Licious (owner of one of the best pho sites around - after this one of course) passes this photograph on to us; the restaurant is in New Jersey. Anyone try it? Is it any good?
Pandaspace - "adventures in life, travel, food, architecture, bamboo" - has a nice long photo-heavy article on their favorite comfort food (and ours, of course). "One Last Pho Gân" one thing that I cannot endorse - removing the chili before eating, as if it were there only for broth flavoring. No no mon frere! The more chili the better!
Reader Mai Lee, who gave me the heads-up about the LA Times article today, has also informed me of the sketchy-but-delicious Pho Hoa in Gardena, not to be confused with the mediocre chain of the same name:
When you have time you'll have to try Pho Hoa in Gardena. I think the Pho is delicious nevertheless, I think it's a unique restaurant because there are no women servers or cooks. This place is run by lazy-cigarette smoking-card playing men in their 40s. Once they were so lazy a group of us drove up and a group of them were playing cards outside. They were annoyed we were there! One of the men stood up and grabbed some menus and lead us to a table with crumbs. I asked him if he could clean it. He looked at me pulled his sleeve over his hands bent down wiped the crumbs onto the floor and threw the menus on the table. hahahah ... later an old man brought us our bowls of pho. He had his thumb in the soup. It was so delicious we never complained ... honestly, I think that's the secret ingredient. We used to joke it was a front for Vietnamese money laundering.
Since we're about 1000 hits over our usual today, I am assuming that the rumor I heard earlier - that we were mentioned in today's LA Times - must be true! Ahh, here it is - an article in which the author seems to believe that the editor is someone named Diamond Dog. Actually, DD is a reader who submitted a few reviews a coupla months back, but I myself, JLT, am the editor, chief eater, and biggest pho fan within a few miles of Sacramento CA. Too bad the LA Times budget woes made them cut back on fact-checkers... But anyway, check out the article, and all the other great foodie sites mentioned! Yum. I'm getting hungry again, and I just ate lunch (a delicious chicken kabob sandwich on a french roll, no pickles, from the deli around the corner from my office).
Can anyone scan the story in the print edition and email it to me? I'd love to see it. Thanks much!
And while you're at it, visit Hewn and Hammered, if you're into that sort of thing.
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