Up until, oh, about six to eight months ago, I stubbornly refused to eat Vietnamese food. If everyone else in the party felt like Vietnamese, I'd surrender, but not quietly, and would make it clear throughout the whole meal how much I hated what we were eating. I don't like cilantro, I don't like its combination with lime juice (which is completely ignored when eating Mexican food, of course), and I mist certainly did not like fish sauce.
However, after all that "hmph!"-ing, I must shamefully admit now that I am quite addicted to pho. There is something about the steaming hot broth that is so paradoxically refreshing in the summer, and yet so warm and comforting in the fall and winter. Though I am not afraid of beef, I never order pho with any of the sliced rare beef combinations. It might have to do with the fact that the places I've eaten pho are always tiny little dives. But even if we were in the King's castle eating pho, i'd still order the tofu pho because I love it.
