~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

Year :      [2003]      [2002]      [2001]      [2000]      [1999]      [1998]      [1997]

Pho isn't just hot in Little Saigon

Three or four times a week, Miguel Torres stops by the small Santa Ana restaurant for his favorite meal. Before he can sit down, the waitress beckons: "The usual, Miguel?" The usual is a steaming bowl of Vietnamese pho (pronounced fuh), a simple soup filled with rice noodles swimming in a transparent, flavorful broth. Torres, 32, was introduced to it a few years ago and says he's addicted now.

"Nothing beats it. It's better than my mom's posole," he says, slurping the silky noodles from his spoon. "But don't tell her I said that." Pho Hien Vuong in Santa Ana, Torres' favorite shop and the first to open in Orange County in 1980, represents how cross-cultural and mainstream pho has become. Pho Hien Vuong owner Chanh Hoang now marvels at the many judges and lawyers from the nearby courthouse who regularly lunch at his eatery, which has a predominately Hispanic clientele. At Pho 54 in Westminster, the typical lunch crowd includes young professionals, city officials and police officers. And pho shops have opened well beyond Little Saigon – in Anaheim Hills, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Orange and Placentia, among other cities.

Perhaps the most obvious sign of pho's coming of age: Chicken soup powerhouse Campbell Soup Co. is testing a pho soup base that may wind up in grocery stores soon. "Thirty years is just about the right time for an ethnic community to start getting mainstreamed," said Mai Pham, restaurateur and author of "Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table" cookbook. "And pho, for the Vietnamese, is the way to do it. "Consider the Chinese and other immigrant communities that have been here longer with foods that have become popular with the mainstream," she said. "As people became more open to the foods, they also become more open to the cultures. Food is the way to connect people to different cultures. It's part of the mainstreaming process."

Its simplicity and affordable cost – at around $4 a bowl – has helped pho join the ranks of other mainstreamed ethnic fare like tacos and sushi. "It's just so healthy and easy to eat – it's just soup," said Hoang. "It's no surprise that the popularity of pho would spread beyond the Vietnamese culture." In doing research for her book, Pham spent a decade traveling to Vietnam, interviewing scholars and local villagers to trace the undocumented origin of pho. The common theory is that pho first surfaced in Hanoi after the turn of the 19th century, a culinary creation borne of French and Chinese influence. Once the country was split into two, the northerners fled from the communists to the south, bringing with them pho and ushering in a whole new fervor for the soup.

The painstaking preparation of the soup belies its simple appearance. It takes about eight hours of simmering a cauldron of beef or chicken bones to create the pho broth, cooked with aromatic spices like star-anise, cinnamon, charred ginger and onion. "It's all in the broth," said Hoang. "A good broth should be as clear as possible and have the deep aroma and taste."

Hundreds of pho shops have cropped up in the Vietnamese business district of Little Saigon since Vietnamese refugees arrived in Orange County in the late 1970s. The names – Pho 54, Pho 79 and Pho 88 – indicate what year the restaurant opened, although Pho 54 commemorates the year in which the soup became popular in South Vietnam. A quick glance in the Yellow Pages shows at least 50 pho restaurants in Orange County – though pho-natics will tell you there are a few hundred in Westminster and Garden Grove alone. At Pho Hien Vuong, Hoang says he's noticed his customers make the pho their own by the way they flavor it. His Hispanic customers love to douse the bowl of pho with plenty of chili sauce, lime and cilantro. Hoang even began serving Pho Camarones, with shrimp added to the soup before serving, after his Hispanic customers kept requesting it. It's now the most popular pho ordered by Hispanic diners at the Santa Ana shop.

"They also asked me to make a lobster pho," Hoang said, chuckling. "But I said, 'Do you want to pay $10 then for a bowl of pho or continue paying $4?' " Daughter Trang Hoang said Laotians add sugar and a sweet hoisin sauce. White diners prefer boneless, skinless chicken strips in their soup - hold the giblets and egg yolks. That's why pho is such a universally appealing meal, because you can customize it and make it your own, said Pham. "The tearing of the fresh herbs, how much chili sauce you put in, it's very interactive."

The pho restaurants popping up outside Little Saigon clearly veer from the hundreds of pho shops tucked in every nook and cranny of Little Saigon. In Garden Grove's Korean Business District, Korean restaurateurs have opened pho shops sandwiched between Korean eateries. Pho shops have also opened in Los Angeles' Koreatown, staying open until 3 a.m. to catch the after-hours nightclub crowds. The shops springing up in other parts of Orange County have names like Little Saigon Noodle House in Placentia and Pho My Man in Huntington Beach. In Los Angeles, the new pho shops have names like Pho-topia and Pho Express. On a recent overcast day, surfers in wet suits and town locals crowded the 9-month-old Pho My Man shop near the corner of Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach.

Owner Soai Nguyen said he has always loved the beach, so he was excited to open a pho shop near the pier. Nguyen said most of his customers are white. "They come in here already knowing how to eat pho," said Nguyen, who owned a pho shop in Florida before moving to California. "It's pretty neat. Then they bring their friends to try it and teach them how to eat it. It happens all the time."

By Katherine Nguyen - The Orange County Register - May 1st, 2003.