As the primary author of the Young & Hungry blog, I release a lot of gas into the ether. Sometimes you readers find it noxious enough to disperse with your own counterattack. It can make for an engaging round of online gasbagging. Just take a look at the four examples that Editor Andrew and I cobbled together for this week's Y&H column.

You readers are frickin' vicious. Thank your stars you aren't Barton Seaver — or Y&H for that matter.

Just for the fun of it, I also rounded up 22 other blog items that generated a lot of commentary last year. You can see them after the jump.

1. Five Guys' Supporters Rush to the Defense of the Chain Burger
2. Saigon Bistro: A Best of D.C. Contender or Just a Pretender?
3. Michel Richard Plans to Move His Home Base to Tysons Corner
4. The Latest on Roberto Donna and the Resurrection of Galileo
5. Orange Juice Should Never Include Ice Cubes
6. Former Used-Car Lot in Trinidad to Get a New Ride — a Diner Car
7. Are All Beer Taxes Bad?
8. D.C.'s a Great Beer City, Chapter 1
9. My Top 5 Desert Island Beers. What Are Yours?
10. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle?
11. Your Last Beer on Earth: What Do the Pros Say?
12. Does D.C. Have a Signature Dish or Not?
13. Minibar Would Be the Toughest Reservation in America, if D.C. Were a Foodie Town
14. Obama's Beer Meeting: Let the Lobbying Begin!
15. Beer Geeks vs. Beer Snobs
16. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
17. Top 5 Beer Menus in Columbia Heights
18. Not So Fast: There's No Deal for a Ray's Hell Burger in Adams Morgan
19. Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise in Restaurants
20. Seeking Nominees for City Paper's Inaugural D.C. Dish Hall of Fame
21. When Should a Critic Just Trash a Place?
22. When Should a Beer Critic Trash a Brew?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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).

Her bowl of egg noodle soup with shrimp and pork is an acquired taste for one reason — it includes a last-minute sprinkling of fried-and-dried pork skin before serving, which releases its trapped oils onto the surface of the liquid. You feel like you're eating a bowl of melted butter. I'm told this is authentic, but I can't seem to confirm it via online recipes.

Van's pho has been, in my experience, hit or miss. My first bowl of "Special Beef Noodle Soup," with well-done brisket, rare beef, and tripe, emitted a wan yellowish glow and barely registered on my internal beef-o-meter. Even the usual fragrances of pho — star anise, cloves, and cardamom — were so faint that you'd need a bloodhound to sniff them out. But subsequent bowls have fared better, combining a satisfying fragrance with a big, buttery richness that made me wonder if the chef hadn't sprinkled her dried pork on top again. (I'm told that's a no-no.)

Regardless, every bowl of pho I've had at Saigon Bistro has been accompanied by a plate of garnishes that looks like last week's leftovers at Pho 75. I'm afraid that, at this point, I still feel the need to hit the ‘burbs for my pho fix.

The pork-laden product at Pho 14

Salad or garden rolls, not to be confused by their deep-fried cousin, the spring roll, have always been one of my favorite Vietnamese appetizers. These gorgeous, transparent cylinders of rice paper come stuffed with a jungle of rice vermicelli, thin strips of pork, crispy lettuce, bright orange curls of shrimp, and light, refreshing leaves of mint, cilantro, and Thai basil (or some variation on the herbs). When dipped in a "peanut" sauce — which, more accurately, should be a cooked-down hoisin sauce with chopped peanuts as a garnish — garden rolls may be my definition of the perfect bite.

They're meaty, nutty, cool, light, crunchy, fragrant, and gummy in the best way possible. Plus, you eat them with your hands, giving you the soft, tactile immediacy that's often missing in utensil-driven food.

But the key to a great garden roll, for me at least, is balance. Each ingredient must know its place — like a worker in a Socialist production collective — and never try to dominate the others.

Lately, however, I've noticed that garden-roll makers at the new Vietnamese outlets in D.C. — specifically Saigon Bistro near Dupont Circle and Pho 14 in Columbia Heights — have taken to overstuffing their appetizers with pork. Far from giving you more meat for your money, this piggy indulgence merely disturbs the delicate balance of a garden roll. The dry, bland flavors of boiled (or maybe roasted) pork dominate in the most unpleasant way.

I brought my complaints to Hoa Lai, head chef at that Vietnamese institution now known just as Four Sisters, who told me something interesting. He says garden rolls are typically eaten as entrees in Vietnam. When a family has garden rolls for dinner, they will typically spread out the ingredients on a table, so that each person can build their own rice-wrapper meal. Frequently, Lai adds, family members will pile on the pork, to the detriment of the other ingredients in the roll. They'll do so for one basic reason: Pork is cheaper than shrimp.

This Vietnamese household approach to garden rolls may be finding its way into the Vietnamese-American restaurant scene for the same reason: Pork is cheaper than shrimp. Then again, it could be that some Vietnamese cooks just prefer this approach because they grew up with it. Frankly, I tend to think it must be a cultural carryover from Vietnam, since I don't see any less shrimp in my roll than usual — just more pork.

Whatever the reason, I don't like it. Maybe you do. Obviously some Vietnamese like it that way (though Lai himself prefers the more balanced garden roll and serves one of the best at Four Sisters). Perhaps the solution is to serve garden rolls like they do in Vietnam: as a spread of ingredients that we can use to build our own.

Personally, I'd really dig that.

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.

I don't know what it is, but the few places that serve pho within the District's borders just can't compete with the operators in the suburban hinterlands. Maybe the economics just don't work well in the high-rent District. Maybe owners have to cut corners to make a buck on a soup that no one—and I mean no one—will pay more than $10 for (unless, of course, Jose Andres turns it into some deconstructed dish at the minibar, with the rice noodles transformed into a powder, which you'd suck through a straw and chase with a beef gelatin cube and a demitasse of pureed Thai basil, jalapenos, and lime).

Whatever the reason, Saigon Bistro only confirms my bias against D.C. pho shops. I ordered No. 49, a "Special Beef Noodle Soup" with well-done brisket, rare beef, and tripe. The broth had a wan yellowish tint to it and barely registered on my internal beef-o-meter. Even the usual fragrances of pho—star anise, cloves, and cardamom—were so faint that you'd need a bloodhound to sniff them out. I typically resist the urge to load my pho with too much Sriracha or hoisin or fish sauce, lest I drown out the exquisitely perfumed broth. But in this case, the broth cried for condiments; without them, the sliced meats ferried very little flavor.

And just think: I paid $8.99 for this, which is a good two dollars more than I pay for pho in Maryland that's 10 times better.

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.

First up is Saigon Bistro, an inviting Vietnamese shop that recently opened in the old Fractured Prune spot on P Street NW off Dupont Circle.  According to the restaurant's Web site, it is owned by "Luna Howard, a native Washingtonian and entrepreneur, and her relatives, who recently emigrated to the U.S. after running an exquisite Vietnamese gourmet restaurant in their native homeland." Aside from the usual Vietnamese options, Saigon is serving up not only pho but also hu tieu and mi soups.

Next on the horizon appears to be Pho 14, a Vietnamese noodle shop on Park Road NW in Columbia Heights. But now comes the word, via the Washington Business Journal, that London-based Wagamama will open one of its pan-Asian noodle shops in the former Olsson's Books & Records location on Seventh Street NW in Penn Quarter. Wagamama is aiming for a 2010 opening.

Don't know about you, but I'm ready to start slurpin'.