Medium Raw

Using sexual metaphors to describe food is a practice blithely, even automatically employed by most food writers—yours truly being a frequent perpetrator. But it seems particularly appropriate when describing pho in Hanoi—even though it’s usually a morning routine, as opposed to a late-night, post-bar, fall-into-sloppy-embrace kind of a thing. Visiting a popular pho shop, particularly later in the morning, after the first waves of hungry people on their way to work have been through, resembles nothing so much as the set of a porn shoot.

Here, as there, the landscape of desire is strewn with crumpled tissues, the spent expressions of human lust. Short pink plastic trash baskets overflow with little white paper balls, wet tumbleweeds are littered everywhere. Walk three feet up to the counter and they will cling embarrassingly to the soles of your feet, trail back to your table as if you are hurriedly exiting a peep-show booth. Unlike with sex, however, this walk of shame comes before touchdown. For one’s efforts, after a long wait on line, the handover of a few dong (the unfortunate name for Vietnam’s unit of currency), a jostle, and a squeeze in between strangers at a low table on a sidewalk, one is rewarded with perfection.

Broth—usually (but not absolutely always) the savory-sweet extraction of many beef bone, heavy on the marrow. Not too dark—definitely not too light. Chances are, there are three or four enormous pots of the stuff going now behind the counter, steam rising to the ceiling, the proprietor ladling the stuff straight off the top. Locals will tell you it’s all about the broth. If the broth isn’t right, the best ingredients in the world aren’t going to save it. Rice noodles. And they’d better be right, too. Too soft, too old, or too cooked? It’s shit. Too chewy? Same. Handmade and cooked to order—or at least in constantly ongoing batches, please. Classically, in Hanoi, the meat component is beef—and beef tendon, but preferences vary as to the exact mix. The counter behind the glass of my favorite place in the Old Quarter is stacked with pre-boiled beef shoulders: the perfect balance of lean and fat; and many prefer this—and only this: sliced ever so thinly onto the surface of their broth, where it wilts and relaxes and nearly dissolves into sublime tenderness. Some purists, however, insist entirely on raw beef, sliced at exactly the right degree of thinness and at the very last minute, added to the broth on the way out, so that the customers can “cook” it lightly themselves in the hot broth of their bowl by simply tossing it gently with their noodles. I, like many locals, prefer a mix of raw and cooked. The unattractive-sounding tendon, cooked properly by a master pho-maker, should be the best thing in the world—even for the uninitiated. Rather than being rubbery or tough, as one would expect of tendon, it should have just enough bite, just enough resistance, dissolving into fatty, marrow-like substance after just a few chews—a counterpoint to the wispy, all-too-brief pleasures of the beef. There’re usually very few of the slender, translucent little tubes in one’s bowl, and if you’re unhappy to discover one on your spoon, then they’re doing it wrong.

You complete pho at the table—and unlike with many similar dishes, where everybody’s got their own way of doing things, in Hanoi there seems to be an accepted orthodoxy. A dot or two of chili paste, a tiny drizzle of chili sauce, a generous squeeze of lime, toss lightly with chopsticks in the right hand—and spoon with the left. Ideally, one wants a perfect marriage of beef, broth, and noodle in each mouthful. Slurping is encouraged. As is leaning down into your bowl. As is lifting the bowl to near your mouth.

There will be a generous plate or basket of greens, herbs, and sprouts next to a bowl of pho—usually Thai basil, mint, and cilantro—and one adds as needed, periodically incorporating elements of freshness and crunch and a welcome bitterness to one’s mix, and one can pick idly at the occasional leaf as well, as kind of a palate cleanser.