Cycle 3 – Item 304

4 (Sun) November 2012

Vietnamese Spicy Brisket Pho

2.5

at Good Morning Vietnam

-Hannam, Yongsan, Seoul, Republic of Korea-

with W

Project 30/30/30: 4 of 45 (see also 45/45/45)

Throughout this November, I am challenging myself to eat 30 dishes from 30 countries over the course of 30 consecutive days.

Vietnam is the 4th country.

As shown here, the latest attempt to render pho even further unrecognizable is to make it spicy.  And it wasn’t just the heat and the color but also the flavor of the broth, which was tangy, reminiscent of Thai tom yam, but without the perfume of lemongrass.  In fact, I’ve seen customers eating noodle soup similar in appearance to this at various Thai restaurants here.  Many years ago, I tasted something like it at a Thai restaurant in the Southern California with Number One Fan LJY, who knew the owner and ordered it as an off-menu item, which made me think that it’d been invented for Korean customers, though I didn’t bother to ask.  I suspect that tonight’s featured dish may be a cultural-culinary counterfeit produced to capitalize on the Korean obsession with tom yam these days.  As far as I’m aware, not that I’m an expert, the Vietnamese don’t make a spicy version of pho, other than by the addition of hot sauce after the fact.

Anyway, the dish was pretty good, regardless of national origin.

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)