Vietnamese staple pho warms diners with brothy goodness

Once I said to my grandmother that I planned to lose 10 pounds.

She laughed and said, "I've been trying to lose 10 pounds for 70 years!"

Today, my grandma is 101, and she is still concerned about her weight. But really, this time of year, who isn't?

That - and the nasty weather - makes January a perfect time to turn to pho (which rhymes with duh), a dish I associate with effortless dieting.

Pho is a revered Vietnamese tradition, a brothy soup with rice noodles, served steaming with a side of fresh basil, jalapeno slices, a tangle of crunchy bean sprouts and fat, juicy wedges of lime. In addition, pho, which is served in every Vietnamese restaurant I've ever been to, usually contains a protein, anything from wafer-thin slices of beef tenderloin to tripe to tendon to tofu. The dominant flavor in the broth is cilantro, although most pho I've sipped has had scallions, ginger, garlic and other spices.

To reacquaint myself with pho, a friend and I met for lunch at the Vietnamese Garden in the Great Neck section of Virginia Beach. It's a tiny eatery with woven bamboo walls and rice paper lighting. And while we were there, it seemed almost every table was sipping - or slurping - pho.

Another longtime favorite pho spot is Pho 79 in Virginia Beach near Town Center. And just in time for New Year's resolutions, another Pho 79 will open in January near Sam's Club on Battlefield Boulevard in Chesapeake.

The Vietnamese Garden is owned and run by David and Phong Tran Evans. She's a native of China who once owned a restaurant near Saigon. They've been in business in Virginia Beach for about 12 years.

"Overseas," David said, "they eat it from the morning until the night."

In fact, pho places in Asia are sort of like Starbucks coffee shops here. People come to linger, and it's considered bad taste to rush the customers.

Our pho came to the table quickly: wide, semi-shallow bowls filled with a steamy, light-brown broth. We tore off tiny bits of basil and floated it into our soup, squeezed some lime juice into the broth and dropped in a few sprouts. Some people put a shot of hot sauce or brown sauce in their pho, too, but we took ours straight.

Then we dipped our thick, white spoons - really miniature ladles - into the broth and maneuvered our chopsticks to lift a knot of noodles from the bowl.

The taste was exotic by American standards, a beefy broth with that unusual combination of herbs and a bright shot of citrus. My "Pho Tai" ($5.99) had thinly sliced eye of round in the broth. My friend ordered "Pho Ga," or pho with chicken (also $5.99).

Less than halfway in, we had been warmed to the bone.

David stopped by our table and told us that the soup is made by simmering a beef bone and seasoning the broth with garlic, ginger "and two or three other things." Every speck of fat is trimmed from the beef, which is then cooked in the broth.

"We used to set the raw beef right on the table," David said, like they do overseas. But that ended long ago when the health department deemed it treacherous.

We continued tearing off pieces of basil and sipping our soup. We'd both ordered the "medium" bowls of pho but had trouble finishing.

"This is really filling," my friend said. "I wasn't expecting that."

But does the soup really have staying power? Absolutely. Hunger didn't strike again until dinnertime.

Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com