Forget hamburgers for a moment. Here’s a beef dish you can believe in, even at a place like Lotus Cafe, which casts a wider net than your average tuna fisherman. Seriously, a Vietnamese restaurant that serves calamari fries, coconut shrimp, and a Sex on the Beach cocktail?  Is this place channeling Saigon or Cancun?

Read More “Dish of the Week: Pho with Eye of Round at Lotus Cafe” »

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

This pho parlor in the Eden Center turns out stellar noodle soups. My most recent order came swimming with thin slices of richly fatty brisket, crunchy/chewy tripe, perfumed beef broth, and a garnish plate brimming with sliced jalapeños, Thai basil, bean sprouts, and even that rare saw-toothed leaf, culantro. Pho Saigon also pays attention to its noodles; they’re soft, supple, and so easy to slurp. This tiny shop, overstuffed with trinkets and pictures and boxes of kitchen supplies near the bathroom, would remind you of a crowded Vietnamese street stall if not for the overhead flat-screen TV set to the Speed Network, where racing school buses provide a little redneck comfort. Yep, you get a melting pot here along with your noodle soup.

Pho Saigon, 6795 Wilson Blvd., Falls Church, (703) 677-0523

In researching this week’s Young & Hungry column on pho in the District, I had a long conversation with Gene Nguyen, owner of the Pho Hot shops in Annandale and Centreville. As  I noted in the column, Nguyen hopes to open one, if not more, pho parlors in the District, but in order to make the economics work in the pricey neighborhoods where he’d like to drop anchor, Nguyen plans to make the Vietnamese noodle-soup experience more gourmet.

If you think that sounds odd, given the stark, white-washed ambiance of most suburban pho houses, consider what Nguyen did with Vietnamese cuisine in general. He’s the brains behind Present, the hyper-fresh, ingredient-driven operation in Falls Church. He wants to put a similar spin on pho in the District. Nguyen wants to build a pho parlor with an open kitchen where diners can literally review the meats they would like to add to their noodle soup.

“You have to add something to [the experience], to attract people a little bit more,” Nguyen told Y&H. “It should be a little bit of a show.”

Read More “Gene Nguyen May Know the Secret to Building a Successful Pho House in D.C.” »

The District’s latest pho parlor is not really one at all. It’s Wagshal’s Delicatessen on Massachusetts Avenue NW, where executive chef Ann-Marie James has devised an ingenious take-out version of the Vietnamese noodle soup. Actually, it’s less a take-out version, which implies that Wagshal’s pho is ready to eat, than it is the adult version of Lunchables.

The sectioned container includes a bowl of homemade beef broth, parboiled rice noodles, raw slices of prime eye of round, sprouts, jalapeno slices, raw red and Spanish onion rings, a small container of Sriracha and hoisin sauce, a wedge of lime, and leaves of cilantro, mint, and Thai basil. Once you get the package home, you remove the small bowl of broth and microwave it for a few minutes. While it’s nuking, you arrange your preferred ingredients at the bottom of the larger section of the plastic container and then dump the hot broth over them.

Voila, pho!

Read More “It’s My Pho in a Box” »

If you live in the District and suddenly get a case of the Pho-king Shakes — that weak-in-the-knees condition that will be cured only with a bowl of rice noodles, fatty brisket, raw round steak, and veggies drowning in beef broth — your remedy requires a long Metro ride to some gray strip-mall outpost in the ‘burbs. It’s like the coke addict who has to brave the projects for a fix.

Fortunately, some noodles houses have now popped up in the District to satisfy our cravings for pho, including Saigon Bistro off Dupont Circle, which features not one but two chefs who recently emigrated from Vietnam. Huong T. Van handles soup duties here, and her offerings include not only pho but also hu tieu (a rice noodle soup with seafood or pork stock) and mi (an egg noodle soup with seafood or pork stock).

Read More “Is It Now Possible to Get Good Pho in the District? Well, Sometimes.” »

Rosslyn’s Pho 75 has gotten the stamp of approval from blogger Scott Underwood. More than a stamp of approval, actually: “Do you remember when you discovered your favorite food?…Well in my case that answer is yes. About two months ago I discovered pho—Vietnamese noodle soup.” Underwood was turned on to Pho 75 by a friend who “espoused its virtues” (FYI Scott: I’m not sure if that’s a correct use of the word “espoused,” but don’t get mad – all my blogs and myspace pages and Twitter feeds are fucked up, too) and is now an addict. But Pho 75 isn’t a one-night stand for D.C. foodies – the cafeteria-style joint has already gotten the heads up from Tom Sietsema and The Washingtonian.

But is Pho 75 the real thing? The ongoing debate about pho – which Vietnamese beef and noodle soup, unless you’re not convinced that pho must have beef, or think it can be vegetarian, or think it must be seasoned in a particular way – is, well, ongoing and ongoing and ongoing and likely to go on as long as Vietnamese people have hot water, broth, noodles, and restaurants. (I guess a Vietnamese doughnut-maker could say doughnuts are pho, but that argument seems thin.) My favorite pho spot is Pho 99 in Bellingham, Washington, right off of I-5. When you’re touring up the West Coast headed to Vancouver and get a hotel in Bellingham for the express purpose of storing your merch so you don’t have to sneak it across the Canadian border, the last city before the border is Bellingham, and you’ll probably be hungry from all the merch-and-hotel related logistics and plotting, so get a room at the Motel 6, dump your merch, and go get some pho at Pho 99, because it’s fucking good, and also they said it’s vegetarian, though I’m not sure if I believe it.

The first time I visited Pho Saigon in the Eden Center, at the urging of a Vietnamese acquaintance, I sat there listlessly over my bowl, wondering who or what was most off: my friend, my thin pho, or my tastebuds. Turns out that Pho Saigon was merely having an off day. I have since returned to the Vietnamese noodle house and have found its soups spectacular. My most recent order came swimming with thin slices of richly fatty brisket, crunchy/chewy tripe, exquisitely perfumed beef broth, and a garnish plate brimming with fresh sliced jalapeños, Thai basil, bean sprouts, and even that rare saw-toothed leaf, culantro. Pho Saigon also pays attention to the noodles in its soups; they’re soft, supple, and so easy to slurp. The tiny pho shop, overstuffed with trinkets and pictures and even boxes of kitchen supplies near the bathroom, might remind you of a crowded Vietnamese street stall if not for the overhead flat-screen TV set to the Speed Network, where racing school buses provide a little Southern redneck comfort. Yep, you get a melting pot along with your noodle soup. The truth is, if not for the dark memory of my first visit, I’d rank Pho Saigon over Pho 75, that suburban institution that consistently hits the mark at prices impossible to resist. Perhaps in 12 months that memory will finally be evaporated—by all the steaming bowls of noodle soup I plan to slurp down at Pho Saigon.

As I had noted in an earlier item, D.C. is not exactly awash in noodle shops. So I was excited to visit Saigon Bistro this weekend, a handsome new Dupont Circle operation that’s run, according to its Web site, by some folks who “recently emigrated to the U.S. after running an exquisite Vietnamese gourmet restaurant in their native homeland.”

I wasn’t as excited when I left the place.

Read More “Saigon Bistro: A Best of D.C. Contender or Just a Pretender?” »

It’s long been a truism that if you wanted good (or even decent) pho or ramen or soba soups, you had to drive to the ‘burbs, whether Falls Church or Rockville, to get your fill. But there’s been encouraging news lately for Washingtonians who want to stay closer to home for noodle soups.

Read More “The Sounds of Slurping: Get Ready for D.C. Noodle Shops” »