A Taste Of My Memories
At 157 Mott, between Chinatown and Little Italy, a big red awning welcomes you to Pho Bang Restaurant: Authentic Vietnamese Cuisine. The dusty storefront tiles and local stench of fish holds you back, but something urges you to go inside. Maybe it’s nostalgia. Or the ‘A’ rating posted in the window. Or maybe it’s out of spite because you dragged your friend an hour outside of the Bronx down to Soho to try this restaurant that, “you promise will be good”. Either way, you push open the large wooden door and a smiling porcelain cat waves hello as a familiar old man leads you to your table. He hands you a menu, but he might as well not have, because you know what you want. In fact, last week you had a dream about it. And for every day since the smell has seduced your senses.
Pho; a golden elixir of noodles and fat. The smells of which linger from the kitchen, and the bowls of others, taunting and tempting your tongue and your stomach. You swallow your hunger and, with your eyes already wide, observe the space around you. Thinking back you realize it’s been almost 15 years since you've sat in one of these plastic bamboo chairs. There is a checklist in your mind, and you go through it: round off-white marble table-tops, red plastic chopstick dispensers, metal tins with oblong plastic spoons, paintings of women in colorful Vietnamese dresses, paintings of lotus flowers on ponds, fake plants with long green leaves, the old man with the bald spot and wispy mustache. The only thing that’s changed is that his bald spot has grown, and everything looks smaller than it did 15 years ago. Even the bowl of Pho. Initially you feel disappointed. Hurt even. As if this “large” bowl of noodle soup had deliberately disguised itself in your memory for the sole purpose of future betrayal, but, once placed in front of you, the steam rises and rinses your face of all distress.
The smell, oh the smell; a musky stew of beef knuckle and fish sauce, onion and yellow rock sugar. Your nostrils flare, sucking up the sweet sap until it hits the back of your throat, and coats it like warm honey, tangy and moist. You leave your face above the bowl, relishing in it’s warmth like a sunflower in July. Your noodles lay asleep beneath a blanket of broth, decorated with bean sprouts and mint, and three very thin slices of very rare beef. You reach for your chopsticks and submerge the pink meat into it’s scalding bath. It is time. You can't bare the taste of your own saliva any longer, and so you attack. Your spoon cradles the first bite, transporting the carefully balanced ratio of noodle and broth from the bowl and to your lips. You hear your mama’s voice, “careful, it’s hot” so you take a moment to give thanks and heed her warning. Slurping graciously you accept the spoonful and immediately crave more, but you can’t go back for seconds too fast. You know that impatience leads to a burnt tongue. And a burnt tongue leads to a meal that tastes of plastic. So you take your time between each slurp.
This is why you came here; for the pho, and the memories its burning broth compels you to recall. In Pho Bang you move moment to moment, and no faster. It is this decadence of being present with your bowl of noodle soup that pampers your senses. In this heightened state you notice a quote on your menu, and ask your waiter what it means. “Haste makes waste” he says. But how would you know, you don't speak Vietnamese.
