My obsession with Vietnamese pho began with the most importance choice my family had to make after Sunday morning church service: Should we go eat dim sum, or pho?
Pho often won out. We would head to Pho Nam, a hard-to-find joint tucked in the elbow of the off-ramp of a freeway overpass. It’s the kind of place that doesn’t try to boast. The décor is plain, even a little rundown. I remember I didn’t like sitting in the booths because my thighs would stick to the grimy seat cushions, and I dreaded using the bathroom. The beef noodle soup is pretty good, though not the best. But it’s not trying to be. It’s just supposed to serve big bowls of steamy broth, and that’s what it does.
When my brothers and I were prepubescent, the three of us would share one large bowl of pho. These were the early years right after we grew a little too big to all fit inside one grocery shopping cart. To my young eyes, it looked like my entire head could be submerged inside the cavernous bowl. Then, it happened super fast, one bowl morphed into two giant bowls — one each for my ravenous teenage brothers – and a little one for me.
My family has a couple traditions when it comes to pho. One is that my mom, who likes her kitchen spotless, taught us to wipe down restaurant chopsticks, tea cups and saucers before every meal. The second is that if the chopsticks came in paper packaging, we would slip the paper off and turn it into a makeshift origami chopstick holder, so that the tips of our chopsticks wouldn’t have to touch the dirty tabletop. We still do both of these things to this day, like an automatic reflex.
We were regulars at Pho Nam, because it was on the way to or from errands at Costco or the AMC 20 movie theater. Occasionally we ventured into new territory, but I guess they didn’t matter very much because I can’t remember the names of those places.
Nowadays as a young adult, I often eat alone. I think many people like me do. We’re addicted to the convenience of ordering takeout delivery on our mobile phones and shoveling whatever comes in the little plastic boxes into our mouths as we stare at our phones, Netflix on our computers or the TV screen. From start to finish you don’t have to say a word to anyone. That goes, too, for people who live with a partner or roommates. Sometimes we need our own space. But I’ve also gotten so used to the solitary habit that it can be hard to break. I’d rather just stay home and eat by myself than go out.
When I eat pho, I’m reminded of good childhood memories and the idea that food is meant to be shared together. It’s not just sitting at the same table together, each person off in their own worlds. It means conversations, about anything, between bites. It means laughing about stupid jokes, reflections about school, work or life, plans for the rest of the day, dreams for the next family vacation or a lecture from my parents. Sometimes there is silence. Broken usually by a burp from my dad. Or me.
This meaning of pho carried over into college, and even now. In Los Angeles, my college friends and I would drive to 24/7 restaurants late at night or first thing in the morning to cure our hangovers with savory soup. I’ve never lost my obsession with pho. I have to seek it out wherever I live, from Portland to Palm Springs, Hong Kong and Beijing. The search is driven by more than an urge of the taste buds; it’s an emotional necessity to remind me of the feeling that I’m not alone, that some people, my family, will always be up for and enjoy eating with me. One of the first things I demand to eat with my family when I visit home in California is a bowl of pho. We plan it weeks before I get on the plane.
