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Phở Nom Nom - Phở, Bánh Mì, and Grill in Rockville and Fairfax


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1 hour ago, curiouskitkatt said:

is it open twenty-pho-seven?

No, and that's why it has a Pho Queue. :rolleyes:

(This could be explored almost endlessly.)

But I swear there was a place in Springfield - possibly owned by an angry Korean divorcée - named Pho Kim.

And there was a place in Alexandria named Pho King.

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1 hour ago, DonRocks said:

No, and that's why it has a Pho Queue. :rolleyes:

(This could be explored almost endlessly.)

But I swear there was a place in Springfield - possibly owned by an angry Korean divorcée - named Pho Kim.

And there was a place in Alexandria named Pho King.

Phoghettaboutit. I actually am not a huge fan of the famed  noodle soup, or ramen for that matter. I know, I know. I actually prefer   Bánh hỏi, a rice noodle dish with bbq pork & fish sauce. That’s my jam. 

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A Brief Primer on Pho

While Diep Tran serves plenty of things besides pho at Good Girl Dinette, noodle soup is built into her history. Her family members and their shop Pho 79 were among the earliest purveyors of pho in Orange County, California—an area that has since become one of the country’s strongholds of exceptional Vietnamese cuisine.

Since even Dave Chang isn’t completely fluent in pho, we thought it’d be useful to give a quick rundown of Vietnam’s most famous culinary export.

A very, very, very brief history of pho: At the most basic level, pho is a soup of rice noodles, beef or chicken broth, and your choice of meat. It is a culinary product born from the mingling of Vietnamese, French, and Chinese cooking traditions during the early twentieth century. Pho originates from the area in and around the northern city of Hanoi, where street vendors first popularized it. It has since spread, first to southern Vietnam, then all over the planet with members of the Vietnamese diaspora. Like many of the world’s great dishes, pho has proven to be preternaturally amenable to change. The broth took on a sweeter edge when it reached South Vietnam. During wartime, meat rations led to the creation of chicken pho. Each successive generation of pho-makers incorporates their experiences and tastes.

By the time pho landed in America with refugees of the Vietnam War, it had veered quite a ways from a straightforward bowl of noodles. The bowl of pho most Americans know and love is based on an aromatic beef broth, redolent of charred ginger, black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom. The noodles are thin and chewy, and the meat has come to play much more of a starring role. You’ll find combination bowls piled with brisket, flank, tripe, tendon, meatballs, and raw slices of tenderloin. Pho in America is almost always served with wedges of lime, bean sprouts, and herbs, and in most shops that don’t specifically identify their pho as northern Vietnamese in style, there’s always a bottle of hoisin and a bottle of sriracha on the table.

Shop names: Pho shops often have names that seem inscrutable to the uninitiated, but many are rife with meaning and connections to their owners’ past lives. The numbers you’ll see in many restaurant names (Pho 79, for instance) represent the year that their proprietors left Vietnam. Other times, the number represents a significant date in Vietnamese history, whether it was the ousting of the French or the separation of the country into North and South. Some pho shops are named for other famous shops in Vietnam, or important historical figures. A relatively new naming convention, the pun, has caught on in more recent years. It’s hard to say whether or not places named Pho King and Phobulous are really a step forward, though.

Further Reading: In their discussion of pho, Diep and Dave bring up one of the great food writers of our time, Andrea Nguyen, who recently published an excellent pho cookbook that includes a much deeper history and explanation than what we’ve included here.

 

This prompts me to have a bit more respect for pho spots that garner a number than the pun. Just my 2 cents.

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