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| - I'm always really hesitant to review places that are literally across the street from ASU West (where I take classes and work) because I worry that my opinion of the business is skewed by its convenience, but to hell with parliamentary procedure, I've got to russle up some FUC's!
At the computer lab at West we have a whole drawer of our office dedicated to take out menus. It is as expansive as it is useless, because the answer is always "something Asian". The only times we've ever used one of the many pizza menus we have is when our bosses offer to buy us lunch, because we fear letting them know what food we really like will give them some sort of power over us.
So yesterday John S (who is Clarice's boyfriend but was my +1 for the yelp event, what's with that?) and I were doing our usual lunchtime shuffle, passing around menus for Chen Wok and Fu-Sing Garden. We came across a menu for Pho Avina. We initially saw the word "pho" and collectively agreed that Pholicious sounded like a brilliant idea, but we were looking for takeout and the staff at Pholicious is so awesome to me on a regular basis that I'd hate to dis them by walking in, giving them an order, and then loitering outside while they made it for me.
Thankfully, John solved my culinary quandary by mentioning that he really liked the boba at Pho Avina. The last time I had boba I liked was at a Quickly! in the bay almost two years ago. The Lollicup near my house, which was promoting itself as if it's shit didn't stink but had weird, unpredictable hours and always managed to be "out" of boba whenever I was really craving it. So Pho Avina it was.
Ordering was only a minor travesty. The restaurant is so tiny and compact that the only place to put their register/takeout counter is right next to the path of the servers, so in the couple of minutes it took us to place our order we managed to obstruct every other employee working there. Thankfully, despite the complaints of my fellow yelper girls, I wear heels about 90 percent of the time, which makes me I'm easy to spot and never surprise someone turning a corner. If they run into me it's because they're jerks and want to see if I'll say "excuse me" and give away my gender. Puny non-yelpers. The mighty Jetta is not fooled by your nonsense.
We spent the fifteen minute waiting period out and about the strip mall, reading The New Times and visiting the nearby gaming store which I'm going to yelp anyway despite not buying anything. 15 minutes isn't a bad waiting time for egg noodle soup and boba. I've waited longer for a cheezburger and shake. Oh jesus, did I just spell "cheeseburger" with a z? I know I should correct it, but I feel compelled to leave it there. the internet has permanently fucked my cognitive language skills.
I ordered the #41 (egg noodle, shrimp, crab, calamari) and a coconut boba. John ordered the old school "beef and rice noodle" pho and a taro boba which he could not describe the flavor of and whenever asked how it was or how it tasted kept thrusting it in my face and telling me to try some. The sense of urgency in his voice didn't compel me to want to take that leap.
The takeout arrangement was both clever, convenient, and troublesome. In our bag were two styrofoam cups of soup, little baggies of warm noodles, and a ziploc of cilantro, sprouts, peppers, and limes. While this made taking our lunch back to the office quick and easy, it did cause some problems in unloading its contents. The noodles, while still warm, were beginning to stick to each other and solidify, which made stuffing it in the cup of broth rather difficult, especially when the noodles didn't separate once submerged. The portions of noodles were relatively small, and I ended up having to put in handfuls of sprouts just to adequately fill the cup, which itself was modest at best. I know I would've gotten more if we had ordered dine-in.
I don't mean to sound like another one of those portion-obsessed Americans, but with work and school and Aramark's price-gouging at our cafeteria, my lunch has to hold me over for the whole day. And this didn't work out for me.
The food (what little of it was there), was actually quite tasty. The squid was chewy, the crab meat tasted real, and the two shrimp that were in there were pretty massive. The broth was hands down the best part. I could drink a whole bowl of that shit. But won't. Because too much sodium is never fun.
I realized waaaaaay after the fact that what we had ordered was not in fact boba milk tea but in fact "snow bubble milk tea" (i.e. frozen boba). The pearls were frozen solid and hard to chew and more than one my straw did the "McDonald's Choke" where the contents became so cold they would not submit to the vacuum I was creating. Eventually I just let it sit on my desk for a half hour where it melted and was then delicious.
[Joke about how lesbians aren't as good at sucking things as other people has been omitted. Yay self-censoring!]
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