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| - Easily Pho-gotten Experience
Can't really comment on the sister restaurant in Spring Mountain, but I stopped by here since I currently reside on the east part of town and I wanted to check out the Las Vegas Athletic Club located not far behind.
A good way to judge a Vietnamese restaurant is the quality of the their beef pho broth. While I was fairly hungry having scheduled a late lunch, I was both delighted and simultaneously skeptical regarding the fact that my steaming bowl of beef pho with flank steak and tendon came within 2 minutes of placing my order. One of my Vietnamese friends taught me some easy signs to spot a good broth are through sight and smell prior to tasting. One should detect an immediate aroma upon the bowl being placed at your table and I'm not sure if that was the case. The clarity of the broth both in term of being able to visualize the ingredients and the absence of an abundance of oil at the surface also is a positive sign and this broth appeared to pass the sight test.
Poking my chopsticks around followed by adding the standard sides (sprouts, jalapenos, lime, and basil), I began to slurp and taste. The noodles were the right texture and not overly clumped together, although this can be the most forgivable fault if all else is right. The meat was problematic in that the thin slices were clumped together like miniature meat softballs and the only way of preventing any undercooked areas would be to OVERCOOK the whole mass. Anthony Bourdain once commented in his book Kitchen Confidential that one should never order steak well done since you will likely get the worst cut of meat available since one cannot tell the difference between the best and worst when it is well done. I feel the same holds true when you are trying to assess the quality of the thinly sliced beef in one's pho. The tendon was actually the star in that they were sliced with a good combination of collagenous goodness and the occasional hint of meat and cooked to perfection.
Last but not least, the broth is what makes or breaks the dish, and in this case, my nose trumped my eyes in that the taste of the broth was fairly one-dimensional. The broth is usually a matter of pride amongst Vietnamese moms and no two are alike since hours to days are spent perfecting the signature combination of beef bones, ginger, onion, and aromatics (cinnamon, anise. cloves, peppercorns, etc) guarded in households much like the Colonel Sanders' original recipe. I could barely detect anything beyond a mild sweetness which could have been MSG or a bouillion cube (we'll see how thirsty I am a few hours from writing this review). I am probably being overcritical since I have had some great broths in the past, so I will say that much like the clientele which was mostly of mixed caucasian/asian couples, this place would be a great primer for someone new to pho since I would think perhaps the addition of the other subtle flavors may weird out the newcomers and sometimes one has to sample an average broth to appreciate an excellent broth.
P.S. Probably the only pet peeve of mine is avoid taking home noodle soups unless you plan on consuming them later that night. It is a food crime to eat them as leftovers when the noodles have had a chance to get soggy and release their starches and muddle the broth.
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