Comment by alex_c
5 hours ago
>How, the novice may ask, does one discover which version is the correct one for oneself?
>There is nothing else to it – you must eat a few hundred bowls of phở and find out. If this requires moving to Hanoi, so be it.
Not the worst life plan, to be honest!
A little bit sad that my own "death bed pho" - chicken pho from that one stall near the market in old quarter - gets just a passing mention as the only acceptable variation to traditional beef pho.
This also brings back memories of our "mystery pho man" - who had three tiny stools and one large pot outside his house every morning, looked like a character straight out of an 80's movie, and was usually sold out by 8am.
Vietnamese food has got significantly better in Toronto in the past 5-10 years - but still haven't found anything that comes even close to Hanoi chicken pho.
My wife, who doesn't eat beef, once asked for chicken pho, and got an extreme talking to. She was sad because she had good chicken pho in the past.
My partner is Vietnamese, and also a chef. I've had every variation of pho one can think of. There is a group of snobs who think they authoritatively own the opinion and can only think of a single acceptable recipe (or chef, for that matter).
But let them be so limited on their own. This isn't a religion. It's a big world out there, and there are a gazillion awesome phos in it.