Desperately seeking pho (feu). A Paris tale.

I woke up this morning and like any other food-crazed person, asked myself “What’am’I’having for dinner?”  While exercising (I do it to eat) it came to me; I need pho aka feu.

But it’s Monday, maybe I’d better just come home after lunch to the Monoprix and get a terrine slice and be done with it.  But where will I get the bread?  Everyone on the street is shuttered for Monday or school holidays.  But I really want pho.

I’m walking to my restaurant of choice and pass a bakery that says it offers artisanal bread – sure, but I’m a sucker; go in, get some 6 cereals, exit.  But I really want pho.

I could also have pasta of course, my fellow screen-writer Ben says pasta is the film student’s best friend; got some nice stuff in the cupboard.  But I really want pho.

After lunch near Oberkampf, I could schlep up to Belleville, bet Asian places there have pho and I could also pick up some baby bok choy, yum.  But I really want pho.

I had a very nice, non-destination-place lunch at Les Enfants de Paris, during which I have nicely stewed tomatoes, so I thought, even in February, with some butter, extra-virgin OO and garlic, they’d do with pasta.  But I really want pho.

Now, backstory of why?  Ever since I served in Viet Nam keeping our enemies at bay – let see, who were they exactly?  The North Viet Namese?  Humm they’re our friends.  The ChiComs?  Humm, they own us now.  The RuskieComs?  They pay our taxes. 

Well, there was some reason I was there.  Maybe to have genuine pho.  And I did, down by the River in then-Sai Gon.  It was delicious.

And I’ve been trying to replicate it ever since, largely unsuccessfully, for reasons I cannot explain (dear reader in San Francisco or Alexandria, please do not write saying I must try your place, let me continue with my story.)

So I exit Les Enfants, wend my way past some of the grungiest Paris-Seattle-type tattooed high/drunk losers with nasty dogs and start to cross the street at the Oberkampf Metro stop when smack-gob in my eyes is a sign – PHO – to take out or eat there.  There is a God, and she’s Viet Namese.

Enter the Heng Heng Rapide BO-Bun Pho joint; very nice man asks what I want: "Pho."  Easy money.  Does some legerdemain and as I’m standing by, I ask: “Viet Namese?”  “No, Cambodian, just next to Viet Nam.”  OK, I didn’t tell him that the guy in the bed next to mine on the air-evac flight blew away over 30 of his father’s friends, I thought that might be uncouth.

He gave me specific instructions on how to heat and reassemble the three containers he gave me.  Of course, an hour later I'd forgotten, just like I always forgot the Montparnasse 25 cheese guys’ instructions in which order one ate the mountain, goat and cow cheeses he carefully sliced out on three plates two seconds after the injunction.

Now it’s dinner time and I opened the liquid, heated it and added the offal and noodle ingredients, put the lemon, mint leaves and sprouts on a plate aside, and, ohh….., “come on John, stop teasing.  Was it the pho of your dreams?”  I’ll cut to the chase.  “No.”

But it was OK.

For the the pho of my dreams I’ve gotta go back to V.N. with my kids, who want to see the country through my eyes.  Not fun, but something.

Where I was coming from:

Les Enfants de Paris
116, rue Amelot in the 11th (Metro: Oberkampf, Filles du Calvaire)
T: 01.47.00.70.74
Open 7/7
Menus: 2 courses for 10.50, 3 for 15.50 E.

Comments

[Omid Tavallai]

It's a shame Pho Bida Saigon is gone, what with its divey atmosphere and old Vietnamese men out front playing cards or dice and casting suspicious looks upon any roundeye who dared walk in... I think you would've felt "at home," so to speak. Its classier sister joint, Pho Bida Vietnam on rue Nationale has just as good a bowl of pho, but none of the war-survivor earnestness of the old one.

[John Talbott]

I want to thank all those of my loyal readers who have recommended Pho Places in Paris by comments here, email or in person. Since this urge seizes me only once a decade, I may not have another impulse for quite a while, but I appreciate the tips.

[John Whiting]

I've eaten good pho at Pho Dong-Phuong in the 11th (Bellevue), and when it's closed there's a big restaurant across the street that's served me well. http://www.whitings-writings.com/bistro_reviews/pho.htm