A great soup, properly understood
Pho is the national soup of Vietnam and one of the great bowls of food anywhere. The broth is clear and fragrant, with a deep beef flavour. The noodles are soft and flat. The beef is sliced so thin you can see the spoon through it. And the side plate of bean sprouts, mint, Thai basil, coriander, sliced chilli and a wedge of lime is part of the dish, not a garnish. Customers finish the bowl themselves at the table, one squeeze and one handful at a time.
More cafes should be serving it. Mostly they aren't because Pho looks like a specialist dish: the ingredient list is long and the broth takes hours. Look closer and none of that holds up. The technique is unfussy, you can leave the prep alone most of the time, and once the broth is in the cold room the bowl gets to the pass faster than a Bacon and Egg Roll.
The broth is the dish
Everything good about Pho is in the broth. Get it right and the rest is assembly. Get it wrong and no amount of herbs or lime will save the bowl. So put your effort into the broth.
Every kitchen that takes Pho seriously does it the same way. Toast a small handful of whole spices (cinnamon stick, star anise, cloves, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, black peppercorns) in a dry stockpot for a minute or two until fragrant. Add water and beef stock powder, about seven litres for a ten portion batch, and a few thick slices of fresh ginger. Bring it to a gentle simmer, turn the heat down low and leave it alone for four to six hours.
The one rule the dish depends on is that the broth never boils. Boiled broth goes cloudy and bitter. Simmered broth stays clear and sweet. The window is narrow, 85 to 95 degrees, and a probe thermometer is the cheapest insurance you can buy for it. The seven litres reduce by about a third over the simmer, leaving roughly four and a half litres of finished broth, or 450ml a serve. Strain it through a fine sieve, throw out the spices and ginger, cool it fast and keep it cold for service.
That's the whole technique. The beef is sliced paper thin and tossed with fish sauce, five spice and garlic. The garnish prep is picking herbs, slicing chilli, cutting lime wedges and washing sprouts. None of it takes more than half an hour. The only long step is the four hour simmer, and you don't need to stand over it.
What lifts a Pho from good to great
Once the broth is right, the bowl comes down to four small things. Each is easy to get wrong and just as easy to get right.
The clarity of the broth. A great Pho broth is the colour of weak tea and clear enough to read newsprint through. Cloudy broth is the most common fault, and it's nearly always because the pot crept up to a boil. Keep it below a boil the whole time and the broth comes out clean.
The thinness of the beef. Slice the sirloin against the grain, as thin as you can. Thirty minutes in the freezer firms it up enough for a sharp knife to slide through cleanly. The slices should be translucent. When the boiling broth hits them in the bowl they cook to rare in seconds and stay tender. Thick slices go grey and tough.
The herb plate. Bean sprouts, mint, Thai basil, coriander, a few rings of red chilli and a wedge of lime on a small plate beside the bowl. That plate is for the customer to use: they tear the herbs into the broth, add sprouts by the handful, squeeze the lime and decide how much chilli they want. Serve the bowl without it and you've taken away half the dish.
The temperature of the pour. The broth has to be at a full rolling boil when it goes over the beef. If the bulk pot has dropped below that, bring a portion back to the boil in a small saucepan to order. The boiling broth cooking the raw beef is the whole point, and a lukewarm pour leaves the beef grey and the soup cold.
A bowl that earns its place
A cafe Pho costs around five to six dollars a serve in food, mostly in the beef and the rice noodles. On a well judged menu it sells for twenty to twenty four dollars. That puts food cost around 21 to 30%, which is excellent for a substantial lunch, and the bowl is strong enough to be the centrepiece of the menu, not a side option.
What it does for the room is harder to measure. A cafe that serves a proper Pho gets known for it. It photographs beautifully, with the herb plate alongside and steam coming off the broth. Regulars come back for it every Tuesday lunch for a whole winter. And it suits a wide range of tastes and diets without much change, which helps when your menu has to please a wide room.
The bowl worth the simmer
Pho is one of the most generous dishes a cafe can serve. The broth has been on since morning, the beef was sliced by hand for the bowl, and the herb plate lets customers finish lunch their own way. None of it is hard on its own. You just have to give the broth its time and keep it below a boil for the four hours it needs.
Make the broth on a quiet morning. Slice the beef on a board with a sharp knife. Pick the herbs. Pour the boiling broth with a clean ladle. Customers who've been hoping to find Pho on a cafe menu will keep coming back to the one that does it right.
Pho has been served in Vietnam for over a hundred years. The Australian cafes serving it well are doing it the same way, and they're earning the same loyalty for it.