Vietnam’s pho-tasticly tasty soup
Fresh and subtly powerful in flavour, pho is the Southeast Asian country’s gift to the world, writes Ben Groundwater.
Plate up
We can argue long into the night about the world’s best soup. Maybe it is ramen, maybe laksa, bouillabaisse or caldo verde, or even Moroccan bessara.
Everyone is entitled to their preference. What you can’t argue, however, is that Vietnam’s most famous soup, pho, is in the conversation. This has to be Vietnam’s greatest culinary gift to the world, among many delicious donations.
Pho is a fragrant, subtly powerful dish that is even greater than the sum of its considerable parts.
Its broth is a gently simmered stock of beef bones with onion, ginger and spices. It arrives pooled around banh pho (flat rice noodles), and rare beef slices, topped with bean sprouts, fresh herbs, lemon and chilli. The aroma is transcendent. The taste is perfection.
First serve
Though this dish is now ubiquitous throughout Vietnam, it has only been around for little over a century. Pho was developed in the north of the country during the late 19th- and early-20th centuries, influenced by Chinese traders, and French colonisers who popularised eating beef.
The pho obsession spread to the south in the 1950s, when the country was divided and millions of North Vietnamese migrated south, bringing their soup recipe with them.
Order there
On the busy streets of Hanoi’s Old Quarter, Pho Gia Truyen Bat Dan (49 P. Bat Dan, Ha Noi) can trace its origins to the accepted inventors of pho, in the village of Nam Dinh. In Ho Chi Minh City, try Pho Hung (243 Nguyen Trai, District 1).
Order here
For those in Wellington, head to Fisherman’s Plate (12 Bond St, Te Aro), where Viggo Mortensen was famously a regular when he was filming The Lord Of The Rings. In Auckland, Try It Out (79 Atkinson Ave, O¯ ta¯ huhu) is the place to enjoy a delicious warming bowl of pho. The institution has been serving the dish since 1989.
One more thing
There are two schools of thought on where the name pho came from.
One is that the moniker – and the dish itself – was inspired by the French soup pot-au-feu. The other is the same story but from a Chinese beefnoodle dish whose name includes the sound ‘‘fuh’’.