Sunday, October 14, 2007

Sunday Lunch

For lunch I stopped in at the corner pho shop I am calling, "Pho Ga Mien Ga", because thats what it said on on its overhang, athough it might just be the menu.
I ordered the pho bo kho, a spicy beef pho. The pho itself was ok, full of big chunks of stewed beef and its fatty parts, only a tad spicy so I threw in more peppers and pepper sauce, 'cause thats how I roll. One of the things I am still trying to get use to is the eating of fatty parts, tendons and those small meaty boney pieces. Before I left Seattle, Angela did well to convince me on the virtues of these strange parts and I got in the habit of ordering soft tendons in my pho at Than Brothers whenever I went. It still feels forced thought, its just not my natural inclination to like these things and I definitely do not crave them. I just make do and like the flavors despite the odd parts. Anyway, the most exciting part of the meal was the herb tray to the right of bowl

and this herb in particular. I don't know what it is, but it had this interesting taste that was vaguely familiar, though I couldn't place it. I found it much more interesting than the soup itself which I can still feel my stomach digesting.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

That herb is "rice paddy herb" (maom in Khmer and ngo om in Vietnamese). It tends to appear in food clser to the delta and anything that errs towards the Cambodian side of Vietnam - so far I haven't seen it in pho to the north.

Christina Choi said...

doesnt it taste similar to cilantro but way stronger

Michael Boleslaw Klaport said...

yeah it is kind of reminiscent of cilantro, but it also had a little bit more going on too.

Anonymous said...

yes, phil is right, it's called ngo` o^m, normally, people use it to add to the fish sour soup (canh chua) to enhance the smell, but I haven't seen people eat pho with ngo` o^m (hugging ngo`), but with ngo` gai (thorny ngo`)