Photo by Kristy Yang

Pho is for Lovers bahn mi: Tasty pig, great bread.

​Pho is for Lovers. I'm still on the fence about that name. Given the restaurant's location at Lovers Lane and Greenville Avenue, it's clever and cute. On the other hand, I normally associate pho with Vietnamese mothers, nasty rhinovirus infections and hangovers. Most people to whom I've spoken about this new restaurant like the name, like the concept and like the location. The food? Well, it's a mixed bag.

The setup at Pho is for Lovers is that of a fast-food joint. It's a quaint idea, but when has ordering at a traditional Vietnamese restaurant not been quick? At any average pho restaurant, the elapsed time of sitting down, getting a menu, placing an order and having food arrive is well below the seven-minute mark. So then, how does Pho is for Lovers set itself apart in the "fast-food" department?

The short menu is on a blackboard behind the counter where orders are placed. There's also a selection of egg rolls and "summer" rolls from which to choose on the counter. The drinks fountain is self-service. Similar to that of the nearby Korean-themed b.b.bop, the food is staggered out to your table once it is ready.

All the dishes are presented in paper, plastic or Styrofoam packaging, regardless of whether the food is for dining in or to go. Therein lies my problem with Pho is for Lovers. Ideally, pho shouldn't be eaten out of a smallish flimsy plastic bowl. Although the $6.50-$6.95 per bowl of pho is reasonable, can the restaurant not spring for the noodle soup to be served in a proper bowl? There's hardly enough room for all the noodles, meat and broth, never mind adding bean sprouts and herbs. After all, a great pho requires extremely hot broth and a high wet-to-dry ratio, but that can't be achieved in the way Pho is for Lovers serves this dish.

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Photos by Kristy Yang

Lemongrass' banh xeo with seafood

​As I teased in last week's Pho from Home post, this week we're visiting Lemongrass' kitchen with owner Khoa Nguyen where he'll teach us how to make their popular banh xeo.

Banh xeo, or Vietnamese crepe, is known to be delicious but notoriously greasy. While Lemongrass' version is still quite decadent, the cooks figured out a simple (and obvious) way to cut the grease factor. When I dined with my mother at the restaurant a couple of weeks back, she couldn't help but marvel at how there was no oil whatsoever on the plate. Someone who's a fan of the traditional banh xeo might miss the crispiness the oil provides, but I didn't mind it so much. I liked the lightness of the dish and found Lemongrass' version to be adequately crisp.

Follow the jump for instructions on how to create a greaseless banh xeo, Lemongrass style.

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Pho even a mother could love

​When I visited Lemongrass last summer, I promised owner/sometimes chef/always waiter/emergency dish washer Khoa Nguyen that I would return in the winter for a bowl of the restaurant's pho. With the cold weather setting in last week, I figured it was the perfect time to make good on that promise.

Joining me for lunch was my mom, something that seemed to make Khoa a bit nervous. Despite the cooking-for-an-Asian-mother anxiety, Khoa managed to coax us into trying a splendid Vietnamese beef carpaccio. One of the great things about the restaurant is its ability to pull off "fusion." Although the owner shares my disdain for the word, "fusion" can't be completely avoided when describing the restaurant's menu. After all, spinach pasta shares space on the menu with bun thit nuong.

Lemongrass' beef carpaccio is a good example of the restaurant's ability to introduce a new twist to an old dish while maintaining its authenticity. As soon as Khoa appeared with the carpaccio, there was something very familiar about the dish, but also something new and exciting. The untraditional rib-eye steak carpaccio was in the style of a traditional Vietnamese goi, or salad, and was served with the customary goi accouterments of shrimp chips and fish sauce.

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​As this weather continues playing its schizophrenic mind games, the affect on me is a range of melodramatic "food swings." It's cold. I want something fat. It's hot. Maybe just some fruit. It's cold again. Maybe it's OK if I have a burger as long as I'm wearing a baggy sweater. Nope. It's hot. Have to take the sweater off and expose post burger bloat. Damn you, El Nino!!! (Disclaimer: I am the only Asian who has no idea what the hell they're talking about when it comes to math and science. I don't know if it's El Nino's fault. I just blame El Nino for everything.)

For weeks now, I've been craving a bowl of pho -- one really freaking good bowl of pho. I'd gotten so desperate I considered going down the street to Green Papaya or Oishi. With the weather being as erratic as it's been, however, I was waiting it out for that perfect cold day to indulge in my pho love-making. Then it came. Last week brought a stretch of rainy and cold days perfect for setting the mood, and I had a work thing that would be bringing me to the Highway 121-Preston Road area of Plano. Perfect.

Since how both Pho Que Huong and V Bistro are situated within throwing distance of each other in that neighborhood, I had been meaning for sometime to visit the area. Both restaurants have their fans, so I wasn't sure which one to try on this particular dreary day. I decided to pick the first restaurant I saw.

The first thing I noticed when walking into V Bistro was how it was set up like a burrito restaurant. I didn't know whether to seat myself, wait for a waiter to seat me or walk up to the counter and place an order. Nevertheless, the restaurant is clean, neat and modern, which leads me to the second thing I noticed once I sat down at my table and opened a menu. The prices are fairly high for a shopping center pho place. I think I even involuntarily let out an audible "whoo." Every item, from pho to rice dishes are all around the $7-$9 price range. Although, I realize it's 2010 and V Bistro is in Plano, in my defense, the group of Chinese diners at the table next to me made a comment along the lines of, "The pho down the street is cheaper. About a $1 less per bowl." Still, this was the second day in a row these gents were dining at V-Bistro, so I took that as a good sign.

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​One of my best friends recently emigrated from Vietnam to the United States. He was born in Ho Chi Minh City, spent all 30 years of his life there and is a proud Vietnamese, but when I last spoke to him, he said something that surprised me. What he said wasn't so surprising as much as from whom it was coming. When I asked him what he thought of America, so far, he sheepishly revealed, "Kris, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but pho over here is so much better than pho in Vietnam."

I've long agreed with this sentiment and have spoken to many who do too. Granted, my friend now lives in San Francisco, a city that is pretty extraordinary across the board, culinary-wise. The consensus, however, is that the higher quality of the beef in America lends to the higher quality of the pho.

With all that being said, I, admittedly, had some great bowls of pho during my last trip to Vietnam. The tide has been turning the past few years, as American Vietnamese restaurants have been relying more and more on packaged spices opposed to beef as their main flavoring ingredient. Popular pho chains in Vietnam are succumbing to the same shortcut, however, and now it's almost impossible to find a great bowl of pho outside of certain mom and pop shops.

Wanting to disprove my jaded pho-disposition, I decided it was time for me to finally try what many feel is the best pho in the DFW area, Pho Bang in Garland. Not surprisingly, the afternoon I drove 20 miles to visit the restaurant, it was closed for business...AGAIN.

(Sidenote 1: Can someone please explain this to me? Why is this Pho Bang always shut down for business weeks at a time? There is always a sign on the door saying that the restaurant will be closed for repairs, city regulation reasons, etc. Is this only happening to me? Do I just have bad timing?)

Already in Garland, I decided to head down to Pho 95. I had yet to try the Garland-area outpost of this well-known chain. The Arlington location is wildly popular, but the afternoon I visited version just west of Garland, it was conspicuously quiet. I grabbed a corner table and ordered a pho tai bo vien, or beef pho with meatballs.

(Sidenote 2: We bloggers recently received a mass e-mail from the editor reminding us to remain as incognito as possible when visiting a future blog-topic restaurant. He's obviously never played 20 questions with a little Vietnamese iron boss lady.)

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Noodles, the anti-blues food

​I haven't written a Pho From Home in some time, as I've been reserving it for when the cold temperatures return. Last week, however, I found myself in the odd position of craving pho in the middle of the Texas summer.

After botching a job interview in Las Colinas, I sought the best and worst type of comfort -- food. This streak of depression-fueled gorging is quite new to me (I usually stop eating altogether) and the result has been a major packing of the pounds. Having run out of money to buy larger clothes and not wanting to completely wreck my three-mile jog from earlier in the day, I decided against my inner urge to assault the nearby Ali Baba buffet.

Pho seemed like the perfect compromise, a sensible, yet soothing solution to my blues.

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​With Texas continuing its onslaught of dysfunctional weather (today excluded), I interpreted last weekend's abrupt cold weather as a sign for me to finally go and review Pho Bang, the popular pho restaurant in Garland. Along for the food ride was my friend Kelly, a Vietnamese cuisine neophyte. Once we arrived at our destination, however, the outside door of the restaurant was locked and on it hung a sign that read, "Closed for repairs." I perceived this unforeseen event as another sign: a sign for me, after three failed attempts, to drive down the street and pay a visit to La Me.

I want so much to like La Me. The Vietnamese café-style restaurant sits in an unimpressive strip mall in the Garland/Richardson area, yet it retains a certain charm. It offers a quaint outdoor patio seating area. It projects a coziness that is reinforced by a sweet and affable staff. It thrives despite being situated a stone's throw away from the larger and glossier Bistro B. Yet La Me's proximity to its overachieving neighbor regrettably may be the contributing factor for many of its own shortcomings.

La Me, like many other Vietnamese restaurants, is closed for business on an arbitrary weekday. In La Me's case, it's Wednesdays. For some bizarre reason, and like a bad blonde-moment movie starring pre-Oscar Reese Witherspoon, I always develop a craving and drive to La Me on, you guessed it, Wednesdays. Fortunately, for us, it was a Saturday, and the restaurant was not only open for business, but still quite lively for 2 p.m.
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​This past weekend's Pacquiao-Clottey fight marked my first visit to Cowboys Stadium. Being the ever-so-dedicated blogger that I am, I took this opportunity of being in Arlington to try out a restaurant about which I'd been hearing good things. Whenever I am in Arlington, I usually visit my old stand-bys, Le's Fire Pot and Pho Empire, two restaurants I adore but which don't receive enough fanfare. My curiosity about where locals were eating, if not at these two fantastic eateries, led me one day to ask my mother's Vietnamese travel agent where she likes to get her native food fix. The travel agency's office is smack dab in the middle of the heavily Vietnamese populated area of Arlington, near Collins Street and Pioneer Parkway. Without hesitation, she pointed her index finger straight ahead towards a beat-up shopping center across Collins, enthusiastically replying, "Pho Palace! They have very good food and are always busy. Just there. Right across the street!"

I decided to keep Pho Palace in mind for another day. Not that I didn't believe her...OK, I didn't believe her. I had never heard of this restaurant before, and it sits in an almost abandoned shopping center on the northwest corner of Collins and Highway 303. Anyone who is familiar with the Vietnamese food scene in Arlington knows that the Viet restaurants clutter in three main areas, the northwest corner of Collins and 303 not being one of them.

Looking for a place to eat as we headed west from Dallas and to the fight, Pho Palace popped into mind, as it is only about a mile away from the stadium. Driving into the parking lot of the shopping center, it's plain to see that Pho Palace is the most popular, if not sole, attraction of the corner. The drab exterior, however, does not appear to affect the restaurant's business as it was packed and humming with activity late in the afternoon.
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What started out as a fun idea to share my mom's recipe for pho with City of Aters turned into something more nerve racking. My mom isn't exactly Martha Stewart, fastidiously measuring out every tablespoon or gram needed for an exact recipe. She, like many Asian cooks, measures sauces and soups by tasting and through experience, or as she likes to call it, "measuring with my eye."

My worries were alleviated, however, when I stepped into the kitchen with mom. We ended up bonding over the pho, and the result is the best translation I can give for my mother's healthy and "quicker" Pho Ga.

A clever commenter to last week's Pho-preparation post mentioned mom's recipe should be trademarked as "Faux pho." However witty, he who tries this recipe should know that prep and cooking time was about 3-4 hours.

THE BROTH

My mom is health conscious, and her methods reflect it. Take the 6-7 pound chicken hen, take out its neck bone and set it aside. You will be using that. Quarter the chicken, cutting off the bird's wings and setting those aside with the neck bone. The next part is optional, but my mother cuts off excess skin and fat, save only layers on the breast and thighs. Rinse with cold water the quartered chicken parts, wings, and neck bone.

We used a 12-quart pot to cook our pho broth. Place all the chicken into the pot and cover with cold water--just enough to cover the chicken. This water is not the broth base and will be discarded. Bring the water to a rolling boil, let it boil for two minutes. Then discard the water, allowing the chicken to be caught by a colander. This "first water" cleans off debris or excess fat from the chicken.

Kristy Yang

​ Rinse out the pot and refill it with eight quarts of cold water. Cut one of your large onions in half and score the onion. Scoring means cutting lines in the onion, but not all the way through, so that the onion remains intact. Next, cut off one three-inch segment from the ginger. Slice these, with skin still on, into thin pieces. Then...

Then my mom admonished me, "How can they make pho with no shallots?!" I left off the shallots off the recipe list last week, and I am sorry. Technically, you do not need them, but my mom insists that it makes a better pho. So if you haven't bought your ingredients yet, please buy a bag of shallots. Peel four small shallots and slice them into thin slivers. Take the onion, the ginger, and the shallots and throw those into the pot of water. Along with these ingredients, throw in four pieces of small lump sugar and a tablespoon of black pepper. Place the pot back on the burner on high heat.

Kristy Yang

​ When the water comes to a rolling boil, add two tablespoons of salt to the water. Add all the chicken, piece by piece, into the water. Keep the burner on high. You want the water to return to a boil, but keep an empty bowl, ladle, and glass of cold water nearby the pot. The empty bowl and ladle are for skimming out any debris from the chicken that floats to the top of the broth. The glass of water is for you to add to the broth when it's threatening to boil over. This is tedious, but necessary. You must keep doing this until all the chicken has floated to the top, signaling that the chicken is cooked completely through. Also, you don't want any debris in your soup. Once the chicken has floated its way to the top of the broth, turn the burner temperature to medium. Take one teabag of seasonings from the Pho Hoa box, and place it in the broth. Cover the broth with a lid and leave it alone. More >>

​Between recuperating from a nagging illness that won't go away and just plain hibernating, in general, I haven't had much time this week to go out and eat. Luckily for me, mom made me a pot of pho that was meant to, at least, last an entire week. Since I wasn't able to visit any restaurants, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to do a little something I've wanted to do since the beginning of this blog. There's an obvious enthusiasm when it comes to eating pho and where to find the best pho, but have you ever considered attempting to make your own pho at home? It's not as intimidating as it seems, and it could very well be a great kitchen skill to add to your arsenal.

First things first: You will need to stock up at your local Asian grocery store. This could probably be the most daunting part of the "making pho" experiment. Buying the right ingredients also consists of a lot of explanation, so this blog is going to be a two-parter, split between this week and next. We'll focus on the ingredients today and concentrate on the cooking next week. To help ease any anxiety you may have about going into foreign territory completely clueless, I stopped by an Asian market to gather some visual aids.

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