Pho Report #3 - Miss Siagon

Miss Saigon gets it’s own entry in Pho report.

This is really more of a love letter than a review.

The reasons that Miss Saigon occupies this place are only in a small way about there Pho’ but since that’s what this series is about I’ll go over that first.

The Pho’s here is just on the earthy side of perfect. The noodles are always well cooked, the broth is deep and meaty and the beef is a fine, fresh cut. The noodle soup served here is completely satisfying for any Pho’ aficionado.

Pho aside what keeps bringing me back here (besides it’s nearness to sleepwalkers rehearsal space) is something much more ephemeral. I have spent many a lunch and dinner sitting in the open dinning room of this peaceful oasis on the gritty corner of sixth and mission. Something about the fact that they fill the air with a CD of muzaked American folk songs that have animal sounds for interludes while an old MGM musical plays silently on the TV makes me never want to leave. In fact this restaurants is one of the few places in the city I feel at ease. Somehow when I sit there with my bowl of soup the chaos outside slips away and time stops.

Pho Report part 2: Saigon Express and Le Regal

These two Pho’ joints are less than a block apart in downtown Berkeley. On the surface they couldn’t be any more different. Le Regal is a medium scale Vietnamese restaurant with a pleasant interior, nice for a sit down meal, whereas Saigon Express is, as the name suggests, basically a fast food joint complete with a chafing dish buffet and faded illuminated photos of the food. Imagine my surprise when there pho’ had more than a few things in common.

Le Regal

The soup here, delivered by a fairly pleasant if hands off waitstaff, was perfectly decent. The broth was a little thin but not altogether unpleasant. The addition of little bits of fried garlic was welcome and It came with a huge heaping mass of the standard garnishes.

The one part of this bowl of soup that was definitely sub par was the meat. It wasn’t necessarily low quality meat it just wasn’t the right cut for pho’. It was too meaty and chewy when served partially raw.

Saigon Express

The broth here was again thin and lacking in the beefy depth I’d come to expect. The noodles where all clumped together at the bottom of the bowl. They seemed as if they’d been cooked the day before then let to sit. The meat, once again, was the main disappointment. It was the same cut as usual but it was so overdone that it had basically the same texture as the cut used by their neighbor across the street. The one pleasant surprise about this place was the addition of cilantro to the garnish plate.

A Side Note
For some reason every place I’ve been to recently has come with lemons instead of limes. Is there some shortage of limes in the bay area?

The Pho' Report Part One- The Friendliness vs. Quality theory

The Pho’ Report: In which I set out to review every Pho restaurant in the bay area (well really San Francisco and the East Bay)

Part One- The Friendliness vs. Quality theory

Pho’ Hoa - This small fast food looking place semi-chain in downtown berkeley was where I first fell in love with Pho’. I’d always liked Asian noodle soups but never really understood all the hubbub over this particular one until one rainy afternoon last year when I ducked in here after buying comic books.

I can’t really explain what happened. It was cold out so I figured soup would be good. This was the nearest place so I figured “what the hell”? I ordered the basic Pho’ Tai (vermicelli noodle soup with rare beef) and sat back with my comics. Sometime mid-meal a switch flipped in my brain. Afterwords I found myself craving Pho’ for nearly every meal.

So now a year later as I set out to write a bit about all the Pho’ I’ve eaten I figure this is the perfect place to start.

The Pho’ here could be describes as average but I tend to think of it like this:

Pho is a food for which there is only so much you can do. It has a sort of glass ceiling but one too many places either can’t manage to reach or try too hard to break through. There is an ideal thing that you want when you order Pho. The noodles must be cooked just right, the beef must be sliced right and rare (or raw), the garnishes should be fresh and most importantly the broth should be simple but still extremely deep in flavor. Get all this right and you’ve satisfied most Pho eaters. This one for sure.

Too many places try and do too much with their Pho. This is not one of those places. Pho Hao manages to give you exactly what you crave when you order Pho’. Their simple noodle soup has sublime perfection to it. There’s something so great about getting exactly what you want when you want it.

On another note the people who work here range from completely uninterested in you too downright hostile. This is a central part of my “friendliness vs. quality” theory that I’ll talk about more in the next review.

7 - Mission - The people working at this tiny little Vietnamese place (on 7th at Mission of course) are beyond nice. Not only where they extremely pleasant with me they were patient above and beyond the pale of duty with, not just one but, all three crazy people who wandered in while I was eating.

Unfortunately their attitude did nothing for the Pho’ which is what I’m primarily interested in. The noodles where overdone and chewy which was bad enough but beyond that there was something seriously wrong with the broth. It took me a few minutes to put a finger on what was so familiar about the rather bad soup. Finally I realized it had the distinct taste of Top Ramen flavor packets. Could this really be how they made it???

My experience here combined with all my former experiences at Pho’ Hoa was what led me eventually to the following theory about Pho’ restaurants:

“Quality of the Pho’ gets worse in direct proportion to how nice the people are serving it”.

Top Ramen Packets????