It was a few weeks (or months...) before we actually made good on our plans to go out for a pho dinner. We had inquired amongst all of our pho-eating friends regarding which restaurant would give us the tastiest, most authentic pho experience, and the common denominator in most of these conversations was a local restaurant called Pho Vietnam. Simple and straight to the point. We were sold. We set out to the restaurant, which, from my house, was only about 10 minutes away. Our directions led us into a fairly sketchy (as sketchy as suburbia really gets I suppose) shopping complex containing mostly discount stores. We weren't sure we were in the right place, until we saw the unmistakable "Pho Vietnam" sign nestled into one corner of the complex.
Upon entering, Becca and I stood awkwardly in the doorway for a minute or so before a waitress, from across the room, yelled "TWO?" at us. Becca, taken aback a little bit responded, "uh, yes, two." "Follow me!" commanded the waitress. The two of us exchanged glances, but quickly moved to follow the waitress to a booth in the back of the small restaurant. As we sat down, the waitress placed a menu in front of each of us, and then walked away. We both glanced at each other once again, and then bent to study our menus. It was then we realized we were completely out of our element. I looked around to find that we were the only non-Vietnamese patrons in the restaurant. The menu itself was about 75% Vietnamese, with a short description in English below each menu item. The menu was also 98% beef. As I struggled to find a menu item with no cow byproducts, Becca perused the beefy list. Each menu item listed the same kind of meat (it was beef, in case you hadn't already figured it out), yet each type of pho contained meat from a different section of the animal. I kid you not when I say that there were at least 20 different choices. Luckily for us, I happen to have a smartphone, so for the next 5 or so minutes, we tried to locate a diagram of a cow on my phone, so that Becca could choose her meal accordingly. After locating said diagram, we agreed that the brisket sounded like the safest choice, so Becca ordered the pho with brisket, and I went for the vegetarian option (as it was the only one on the menu not containing beef). After the waitress took our orders, we studied the items on table in front of us. There was a fork for each of us, which we couldn't really tell if it had been used by the previous occupants of our booth or was actually for us (which would be odd, considering we ordered soup), so we decided to leave the forks alone. There was also one dispenser full of soup spoons and one for chop sticks. We decided that these would be our weapons of choice for this meal, so we armed ourselves and prepared to go to battle. A few minutes after we ordered, the waitress brought this dish to our table (see picture below):
Each of us had a momentary panic when neither could figure out what we were supposed to do with these things. Each plate contained one lime wedge, one diced jalepeno pepper, sprouts, and a sprig of what we assumed to be basil. Our thought process went something like this: "Is it...is it some type of salad? Are we supposed to eat this as like, an appetizer?" Becca decided that we needed to consult our friend Iris, who, as Becca assured me, is a pho expert, and would definitely know how to proceed with the consumption of this plate. After the photo was taken and sent to Iris with a caption that read something to the effect of, "WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS!?!?" the waitress brought our giant bowls of pho to the table. We had no time to deal with our mystery salad/appetizer plate situation before we were expected to dive into the main course. We quickly found that the pho could not be consumed with a spoon until and only until all of the noodles had been eaten. As we went to work attacking the slippery rice noodles with our chop sticks, our text message to Iris was answered. "Uhh, guys, it's a garnish. You're supposed to add it to your soup..." OHHHHH! We totally got this. After squeezing the lime wedge, and adding the peppers (and for me, a generous dollop of Sriracha), we deciding that the sprouts were questionable at best, so we decided to leave them out and proceeded to eat our soup. We also didn't add the basil, but I think that was just because we didn't know for sure what it was at the time. After finishing all the noodles (the best part) and sipping as much broth as we could handle (that was too much liquid for any one person), we decided to call it a day. We sat there for about 10 minutes waiting for a waitress to come by and give us the check. No waitress appeared. We figured that A) either the restaurant had really bad service, or B) you had to pay at the register. Not really knowing how to proceed from here, we decided that observing another table before exiting our own would be the wisest decisions. We each picked a nearby table and creepily watched them eat their meals with the hopes that someone would soon finish and we could glean the information we needed regarding how to go about paying for our meals. As the table next to us finished eating, I made some guttural noises to get Becca's attention and made purposeful eye contact with her, before darting my eyes to the table next to us, and then back to her again. She caught my drift. We then knew what we had to do: pay at the register. Now, I know what you're thinking. Why couldn't one of us just go and ask a waitress while the other manned the table? Psh, silly you. That's much too simple and not nearly as covert. After paying for our dinners, we bid Pho Vietnam adieu, and went on our merry way, sloshing happily back to the car full of Pho and stories.
Now guys, I have to tell you, despite our shaky start, this evening, in my opinion turned out to be a rousing success. The pho was indeed delicious, and we have since been back a second time because we simply couldn't stay away (although Becca did decide to opt for vegetarian the second time around as the beef was also questionable-told you). The frozen yogurt afterwards didn't hurt either...yes, we are THAT white.
~Felicia
No comments:
Post a Comment