pho-king

SF Gate does pho

A quick & easy read by Mai Pham over at the San Francisco Chronicle on pho and the importance of food & family in Viet culture. A recipe is included.

perfecto phở

Over at royby.com, you can read about one person's attempt (or rather, walk around the corner - in Saigon, you never seem to have to go any further than that!) to find the world's most perfect phở.

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!

Phở Cuong in Tacoma

Our friend Xortch, of Seattle WA, offers this short but sweet review of the excellent Phở Cuong in Tacoma.

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 Superflip

Superflip enjoys a birthday bowl of Phở Bo at Phở Bac Hoa Viet on Broadway in Sacramento.

Viet World Kitchen & the Evolution of Phở

Andrea Nguyen, over at the wonderful Viet World Kitchen, has written a wonderful article for the San Jose Mercury News' Food & Wine section on the evolution - or Americanization - of phở.

VWK, the most complete Internet source on Vietnamese cuisine here in the US, has a whole lot of other great pieces on our favorite food (and a whole clearinghouse section on Viet food in newspapers and magazines), including this wonderful booklet by Sofitel Hanoi chef Didier Corlou.
And if you're cooking Viet cuisine yourself, don't miss her Mama Says section, with great cooking advice from Andrea's experienced cook mom.

All hail the King of Phở!

I think this website needs a theme song:

(scroll down to 038, by “Brute Force”).

All hail the King!

Tots Need Tendon Too!

Global phở chain Pho Hoa deserves some credit for creating a phở-based "kids meal." Comprised of phở with brisket and meat balls ("no scallions") and a soft drink, it's a worthy competitor to those other, so-called "happy meals." But, wouldn't kids be even happier at Phở Hoa with some scallions in their soup (not to mention lime and basil)? And such limited meat options, to boot. C'mon, tots need tendon too!

Photo: Phở Hoa.