pho-king

yum tacos!

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

Wikipedia Got Some Pho

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!

Pho King shop

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!

Subscribe via Email or RSS

While we live for your visits to the site - your ad clicks pay for us to exist, certainly - we understand that it can be frustrating to re-vist a site only to have the content unchanged from the last time you were there (or here, as the case may be). The answer: subscribe to our RSS feed, or get Pho King via email.

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technical difficulties

The category picker is temporarily offline. Hopefully we'll be able to get it back within a day or so - sorry!

To Slurp or not to Slurp

A reader writes to ask if it is acceptable to drink broth from the bowl once everything else is gone, if it's not possible to get that tasty goodness out via spoon. Is this rude? There's so much loud slurping going on in every pho joint that I have trouble imagining that drinking from the bowl would be rude, but thought I should ask you all and get the definitive answer.

Pho: The Perfect 1st Food for Babies

My 9 month-old is a girl after my own heart. She loves her some pho. I've gotten into the habit of taking both my toddler and baby out for pho about once a week. It's cheap, fun to eat, and delicious. And when you think about it, it is a perfect food for babies just starting to eat solids.

The noodles are made of rice which is a recommended starter food since rice is not generally an allegenic. The beef is thinly sliced and easily shreddable. The broth, unadorned, is simple and satisfying. I suppose one could be concerned about the amount of sodium in it, but I am of the school that my children eat what we eat (within reason). Of course, I am not going to put chilis or Sriracha in my baby's portion, but I am also not going to freak out if she eats a little salt for one meal.

The restaurants I frequent here in (northeast) Portland, OR (Pho Oregon and My Canh) are very obliging to this mama and her two young daughters. I order a big bowl of pho and the wait staff immediately brings extra bowls for the girls and sharp scissors so I can snip-snip the baby's noodles and meat into teensy pieces. Then it's slurp-city for her — and us — until every last noodle is gone.

Pho. Fun food for babies, too.

Instant Ca Phe Sua

I don't know if many of you are like me but I don't always take the time to steep the coffee I drink. When I'm at work I can't drink the crap they make there cuz it tastes like ass and it give me a stomach ache. I of course turn to one of the instant coffee mixes from the mother land. My dear readers I have tried a new one on the market and I just wanted to warn you about what I found. I usually drink the VinnaCafe stuph in the orange bag. I love it and it will make you grind your teeth if you drink too much too fast, it's great. Just for kix, since it was new and on the shelf next to the regular I tried one called G7. I was not impressed to say the least. I can't even believe they are actually trying to pass it off as Vietnamese coffee. Be warned, don't be curious ... G7 sux!

Noooda Inventions!

Pho ya Pho eating preasha!

The mastah has shown me yet another level to which noodas can be taken. What won't they think up next. Props to Greg M. "M" is pho Mastah! Crick da imaich and id git riddle bigga...

The Embodiment of Pho

These are the things that run through my mind while enjoying pho at Lucky's pho in Mira Mesa Black Mountain Road, just north of Mira Mesa blvd (connected to Lucky Seafood). Daily treat that can't be beat from North County to San Y'sid' ... best pho in the land from Alabama to the DMZ From Hanoi to Houston. The master was preaching these and other great realizations in this morning pre-pho meditations and I thought that I should share the pho-losophy with you...

hoan nghênh to visitors from Talawas.org

Hoan nghênh and welcome to our new friends from Talawas.org. Please don't hesitate to email me if you would like a posting account; we are always looking for new content in any language.

Phở for Fighting

When asked about his diet, champion San Shou (kung fu) fighter Cung Le said:

My diet is pretty much the same whether I'm in training or between fights. In the morning I drink vegetable juice: carrots, spinach, beets. In the afternoon it's phở, a Vietnamese soup. For dinner it's usually chicken and pasta or rice. I top it all off at night with a protein shake.

from Inside Kung-Fu, November 2004, p 70, emphasis added

welcome visitors from Yahoo!

Hello friends who saw us through Yahoo (who picked us as a new & notable site today, August 27). We are looking for AUTHORS! Please email me and I will send you the typepad author invite thing, and you can post interesting phở anecdotes, pictures, reviews of local places, and any other phở-related news you can think of. Even if you don't want to become an author, introduce yourselves in the comments and tell us a bit about the phở situation where you live!

Thanks for visiting - and if you're at all interested in Craftsman, Prairie & Mission art / architecture / design, or Middle Eastern & Mediterranean food, please check out our other community/collaborative sites as well!

Say Phở

Greetings all. I just stumbled into your soup bowl and Joshua graciously let me swim around for a while here.

It occurred to me that it ain't easy to say "phở." I realized this when I saw Xeni's post on BoingBoing:

A Vietnamese-American software developer pal once tried to teach me how to say the word properly -- most Americans butcher the word into something that sounds like foe. He told me, "Just say 'fuck' without the 'ck,' but try sort of curl your voice up in pitch and tone a bit at the end." I never got the phonics right, but I still dig the phở.

This got a response:

BoingBoing reader John Horner says, "Whoever told you how to pronounce pho was making it all too difficult. The comma stuck in the side of the O makes it an ur sound and the question mark above it means it's pronounced as a question: "fur?". Imagine yourself as an animal rights activist presented with a fur coat. My wife is Vietnamese, if that helps, and Vietnamese is a bit of a mess orthographically because it was translated from Chinese ideograms into French by a Portuguese guy.

Best of all would be if someone were able to make or find an MP3 file of a Vietnamese speaker saying the word. Does anyone out there have such a thing? Can anyone out there make it?

we wuz robbed

I guess someone beat us to "Phở-King." Hopefully they won't get all pissy. The shirt is definitely k-rad though, and I'd buy a couple if it weren't $21. What's the deal with the $21 hipster shirts all of a sudden? That's just nuts.

Phở-tography

Phở Hoa, 136-71 Roosevelt Avenue, Flushing, New York.

Phở L.A.

So there's Pho 79, Pho Bac, and then ... there was Phở Hoa. The other two get these great reviews every now and then, especially 79 (which is my less favorite of the two), but Phở Hoa was always head-and-shoulders better.

Now it's closed, and I fear for my Sunday-morning hungover self without a phở standby in town.

Suggestions, please!

hello intarweb friends

Hello friends who saw us through Boingboing (which is pure awesome). We are looking for AUTHORS! Please email me and I will send you the typepad author invite thing, and you can post interesting phở anecdotes, pictures, reviews of local places, and any other phở-related news you can think of.

Phở-em

You’re quite the food
Even when your in the nude
No matter what the mood
You will always keep me renewed.

Never tattooed
Almost as if shampooed
Won’t be rude
Or even start a feud

Such a good flavor
To always savor

new restaurants?

Do either of these two places actually exist? If so, where are they located? We seriously need to get out and review both of them.

Another Perspective of Pho

I'm Virtual-Doug. While most of you who read this are on the west coast, I am way down in deep south Texas - right on the Rio Grande. Not exactly pho country, eh?

But, I came by pho the way God intended - I first tried it in Viet Nam.

give us a name! now!

I've got some credit for a couple years' worth of domain registration ... So somebody think us up a real good name! Also accepting 570-pixel wide mastheads (betw. 100 - 300 pixels tall) too. Back to your previously-scheduled soup ...

My first Pho

When I was fourteen and first exploring love, I convinced a half Irish, half Vietamese boy to be my boyfriend.

We had a lot in common: we liked Nirvana, and we had Algebra together, too.

He was extremely tall, had a beautiful face and dark hair. He thought he looked a lot like Kurt Cobain, especially after he bleached his hair. He didn't, but whatever.

He lived in Atwater. His name was Scott.

Scott's mom was a teeny, tiny Vietnamese woman. Scott's dad was a huge man that worked on cars.
Scott was a perfect genetic blend and we would sit in his bedroom, make up song lyrics and smoke a lot.

Anyway, the first time I met Scott's mom, she took us out to dinner to the only Vietnamese restaurant in Merced County. I remember looking at the menu and freaking out because I had no idea what to order and I wanted to seem like a nice, smart girl in Scott's mom's presence.

Scott laughed at me. He ordered Pho. His mom ordered Pho.

I tried to pronounce it. He kept laughing as I kept managing a "Fuh," or a "Fah." Once I made a sound like "Foa," and I was in.

The Pho came and it was steamy and delicious. I ate every ounce.

Scott was my first kiss and my first Pho. What are the chances?!

i demand that you eat more pho

Finally - just what you were all waiting for - a weblog dedicated to the most perfect food in the world, the Vietnamese ambrosia of beef known as pho. Please post pictures, reviews, and warnings for good, bad or just different pho anywhere in the world. Share the love & eat more pho.