You made an appointment with your friend at 7:30 am, but there was traffic so you arrived at 8 am. Looking at the plate of pre-cut chili, you nodded in approval because the chili slices were thin, seedless, and the beef was soft and sweet. You said: Eating a bowl of pho is still enjoyable because it is cool and has a lot of vegetables, while eating a bowl of pho in the West always feels dry because it only has lettuce. You are not a dieter, but you like to eat a lot of vegetables. Your biggest impression when you first set foot in Sa Pa was when you were eating pho when a H'Mong woman walked in with a basket of cool green vegetables on her shoulder.
While eating, you said, looking at the big bowl of pho, you remembered the stall near the construction site where Mrs. N would set up her pho stall every afternoon at 5pm. Her pho was for workers, so the amount of noodles and meat was twice as much as normal people. Eating it would fill you up for the whole day, enough to carry loads of heavy loads. Now that pho stall is gone and the construction site has become a huge apartment building.
He said that in this land rich in culinary traditions, there are many delicious pho shops, from pho bop hoa (turtle core) to salty pho with high prices, from pho duong tau to pho gai (street pho)... It's not like in the old days when you could have a bowl of "pilotless" (meatless) pho that was so refreshing, the days when eating pho made you crave MSG...
Back in the alley, sitting drinking tea on the sidewalk, he and his friend were still engrossed in the culinary story, and talking about the book “Delicious Hanoi Food” by writer Vu Bang, who had devoted many beautiful words to pho, comparing it to the “national dish” of the Vietnamese people. While he was engrossed, he suddenly said: Oh no, tomorrow I have to go on a business trip, I have to call her (meaning his mother) to ask her again what kind of instant pho she likes to eat so I can buy it for her to eat for breakfast all week. Poor thing, she hasn’t had pho at a restaurant for a long time, she must have forgotten the taste!
