Deconstructing Vietnamese pho soup

The line of customers waiting to order at Bamboozle Café is long, almost to the door. Every time someone steps through the entrance for lunch, a whoosh of cold air blows from outside on this chilly day.

Inside the small downtown restaurant, table after table has at least one porcelain boat-shaped bowl filled with steaming Vietnamese pho soup. There are so many boats on so many tables, it looks as if a miniature, half-sunken navy might set sail at any time.

Eating soup is to be expected on a cold day. Anyone who has ever enjoyed a hearty bowl of pho knows it's like wrapping a warm blanket around the shoulders.

But the soup, long a staple at restaurants with Southeast Asian menus, has crossed over to a wider population that is finding pho to be a delicious, fresh, year-round entrée.

"The great thing about being downtown is that I've never had so many people come through our doors who say they have never had Vietnamese food," Bamboozle owner Lynn Pham says.

"Because I have a captive audience [of downtown office workers], I can introduce them to a new way of eating."

For the unfamiliar, pho (pronounced "fuh") is a soup traditionally made with stock from beef bones that have been simmered for as long as 12 hours. To that mildly-sweet broth are added a tangle of rice noodles and beef. From there, the diner can add garnishes such as basil or mint, cilantro, lime, bean sprouts. For a spicy edge, jalapeno or Thai peppers can be added.

The dish's lineage traces back about a century ago to northern Vietnam, where villagers outside of Hanoi catered to Vietnamese customers as well as Europeans who lived in the French colony. Some of the ingredients, such as the noodles, and ingredients like star anise and cinnamon hint at the region's Chinese influence.

Pho migrated to the United States in the early 1970s after refugees fled South Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War. As refugee neighborhoods sprang up in large cities in the western and southern United States, more Vietnamese restaurants opened and offered the dish. During subsequent decades the popularity of pho has grown beyond Asian customers.

Outside Los Angeles, for example, Caucasian and Hispanic customers flood restaurants in Orange County's Little Saigon neighborhood in search of pho bo , or beef noodle soup.

What makes it so appealing, says photographer and food blogger Diane Cu, is its freshness and low price.

"It has its own cult following," says Cu, who writes White on Rice with her husband, Todd Porter. (www.whiteonricecouple.com)

"There are so many pho places in southern California, that for $2.50 or $3 a bowl, you can get an amazing meal."

Cu grew up eating pho made by her mother. And, according to Vietnamese custom, it was eaten for breakfast and sometimes for lunch.

The culture of eating a bowl of soup as a meal is unique to Asian cultures, Cu says.

"In America, soup is a little tiny cup," she says. "We eat a huge bowl."

A traditional pho house In Vietnam, Cu says, will always serve hot tea, usually roasted black or green teas. Younger customers might drink boba tea or a fruit drink.

"I crave it whenever we travel and go a week without eating Asian food," she says.

Her husband is the pho maker in the family. He loves the process.

"Whenever he falls sick or we feel tired, he makes a bowl of pho," she says. "It's the whole process of making it that he loves. He's the only white guy who can make good pho."

That process is no less labored in a restaurant setting than at home

At Trang Viet restaurant on Fowler Avenue in Tampa, owner Trang Viet steeps his beef bones for eight hours, then stores the broth overnight in the refrigerator so that the fat will solidify on top. He skims off that layer for a healthier, fresher tasting soup.

Trang, who grew up north of Saigon, offers beef pho made with brisket, as well as versions with marinated shredded chicken (pho ga ) and meatballs (pho bo vien ) on the menu. He adds star anise, cilantro, fennel seed and cinnamon to boost the bowl's aroma.

He's grown the herbs used by the restaurant for 18 years, including what he says is the most important component.

"It has to have basil," he says. "That's the key thing. Basil is a much better flavor" than mint or lemongrass.

He winces when talking about how Americans use the sriracha Thai hot sauce or the hoison sauce that are standard tableside condiments at Vietnamese restaurants, including Trang's.

Vietnamese generally choose to add spice through use of sliced jalapeno or Thai chiles. Sometimes a few dots of sriracha will do. Americans, though, go heavy on the spice.

"People just pick up the sauce and dump it in," he says. "They have to taste the soup first. I try to say, "Please." But what can we do?"

"There have been debates and forums," Cu says. "It has evolved a lot in the past 30 years."

Pham, who is in her early 30s, balances old traditions and new ways at Bamboozle. The serving boats, for example, once had holders that made the chopsticks look like rowing oars.

"They were my splurge," she says. "A lot of restaurants call their biggest bowl a 'freight train.' I wanted mine to be a boat."

The master pho recipe, though, comes direct from her mother, Bea, who makes sure her daughter cooks the traditional family dish to exact specifications.

But she also offers a vegetarian pho, something few restaurants locally put on their menu. The idea was to cater to an urban dining audience that wants to eat healthier. That explains why her chicken pho is as popular as the traditional beef version and why the salads and spring rolls at Bamboozle sell so well.

"Vietnamese is a naturally healthy cuisine, but I try to package it in a way that underlines that aspect," Pham says. "When you think healthy, you think chicken."

Those who are newcomers to pho are hooked, she says, because it's full of healthy flavors but it isn't boring and bland.

"The flavors are layered in such a way that they keep you guessing," she says.