10 - Pho Bo 96 Bui Vien Street

This Pho restaurant is at number 96 Bui Vien Street in District 1 along one of the main 'backpacker ghetto' thoroughfares. I originally blogged this for a Moveable Feast feature at The Food Section. The fact that it's empty is a worrier and the three woman running the show are of the agressive, hard-sell, drag you in by the arm whether you're hungry or not variety that tends to unsettle my stomach. However, I do want to cover as many Pho stalls as I can and I'm game for anything - good or bad. This restaurant is actually a streetstall within a restaurant. The stall can be wheeled around the streets and the broth served alfresco if needed. Not that the owners would need to do that these days. Just bring the stall in off the street - smart.

I order Pho bo tai (Raw beef noodle soup). It arrives with a three herb plate, blanched beansprouts, slices of lemon and sliced yellow chilies. Certainly looks like bonkers good broth from where I'm sitting, but let's dive in and see what's under the bonnet. Plenty of meaty vapour powering through, however as with many other Pho I've had in town, it lacks a distinctive character to separate it from the rest of the gruel gang. Having said that, it's far better than I was expecting. I did think the restauranteurs in this part of town would veer towards laziness what with their clientelle mainly consisting of clueless foreigners, like me. However, the noodles aren't fresh enough and taste as if they've been out in the sun too long. This is commendable Pho, if not great Pho.

The main gripe, aprt from the stale noodles, being chewy beef. Buy a tenderiser, I've seen them on the market, cost less than a buck and does wonders for meat heading brothwards. 12,000VD a bowl. Not worth making a return visit here.

Comments

[Reid]

Hi Noodlepie,

Don't like chewy beef either and I don't like the flavor of star anise to come across too strong in the pho that I eat. Seems like that's the case here...either that or a lot of sweetness for some reason.

[azine]

hi pieman! what camera do you use to take your photos? i notice that your more recent articles have higher quality photos. you must have upgraded recently?

maybe you can branch out and set up a website featuring photos of vietnam?

[pieman]

Cheers Reid - chewy beef is no fun, that's for sure.

Azine - I use a very knackered Sony DSC-P9 with a platry 4.0 megapixels and a feeble 64MB memory chip. I haven't upgraded at all since I started the blog, although I do plan to.

If the lighting's good the camera works fine, it's crap indoors or under moody restaurant lighting. I haven't bothered blogging many eats as the pics were so awful. Any perceived improvement in quality os down to the fact that I'v ebecome a bit more software savvy since I started blogging. I try to 'save' crap-snaps by using the 'enhance' function in iPhoto. Then I resize and reduce the photo in Photoshop.

Absolutely no plans to do a Vietnam photo website. I've worked with a few pro-snapppers and am always in awe of their abilities. I am a hobbyist, point and shoot, that's all I wanna do.

if you're interested in photography, check out Notes from the road. He recently got in touch with me. His site is great.