Pho on You

Because I've traveled the world, I've had the opportunity to try some fantastic, exotic, sometimes wonderful, sometimes genuinely scary bad food. I like to think I'm daring when it comes to experimenting with food, like the live and still squiggling sushi I ate in Tokyo one year while Tats Nagashima did all he could not to laugh at my terror. But there are other happier experiences --my first escargot with Phyllis McGuire in New York, my first uni with Robbie Porter in Cannes. A few years back, my dear friend Bruce Wolman took me way out in the hinderlands of Los Angeles to where the Vietnamese ex-pats settled. Bruce promised me that I would so love the Pho soup. He was so right! We went back several times before he up and moved back to Norway and Washington, so there I was Pho-less. Recently I saw one of the new cooking shows called "Outrageous Food" or something like that and there they were cooking Pho which is extraordinarly complicated to do (who knew??). My mouth was watering after the show, so I went and looked up Viet food to see if I could find a place anywhere nearer my home than those aforementioned hinderlands. Voila, there it was--right by where I shop in Westfield Shopping Town. I went the very next day and since I'm greedy and really like what I really like, I ate a bowl on the spot and took another one home to eat later that night. I have been back four times in two weeks. Now I have to invite Bruce to come back from Norway and have yummy Pho with Ruth Adkins Robinson.