"pho" news and stories

We posted about Pho Fever around this time last year, and appears that since then the pho site has added a forum where fans can discuss that ambrosial mixture of beef, broth, noodles and herbs. The forum isn't exactly booming, but there are about 50 users, and a healthy banter about pho recipes. With any luck, more people will check it out and share their thoughts. The site also has a sparsely updated pho blog, but for my pho blogging needs, I think I'll stick with the slightly more current Pho King.

If you enjoy Tony Bourdain's adventures into exotic cuisines and like watching him experience things that we don't normally get to see on a day-to-day- basis (iguana? cobra heart?), then you've got to check out the most recent post from Deep End Dining's Eddie Lin. He goes to Little Saigon in Orange County, CA to meet a cookbook author and her father, and instead of simply enjoying the simplicity of a bowl of pho, tries pho topped with a bull's organ, and were' not talking about internal organs here, folks. Eddies' pho had bull's penis.

And it doesn't just stop there. His dining companions also encourage him to try pre-mature egg yolks (not premature fertilized eggs, which he has eaten before), and snails with bananas.

Hey, pho isn't just about noodles and broth anymore.

There's nothing like a bowl of hot, steamy Vietnamese beef noodle soup, or pho, on a cold winter's day. It's my choice over chicken noodle soup or even my childhood fave, cream of tomato, when I'm sick. The spice clears the sinuses, the bean sprouts, Thai basil and mint brighten my palate, and the broth warms the cockles of my heart. This pho comes from the excellent Portland, Oregon Pho Hung.

[Photo Sarah Gilbert]