Beef pho

How could I possibly be hungry after all that food on New Year’s Eve?

Well, by lunchtime I was ready for something. I don’t know what the weather was like where you are, but our New Year’s Day was a dreary, rainy one, and when the weather is like that, I want soup. And if I want soup, I want pho.

We’ve only lived in Salem for a couple of years and are still learning all the many places to find good food (and there are MANY), but we did find a Vietnamese place in Beverly that we like enough to go occasionally. The place I like the best is actually a bit of a drive for us now, so we haven’t been for a while, but this place makes a decent bowl of pho, and my wife likes their egg and tofu banh mi.

My favorite beef pho combo has sirloin, brisket, tripe and tendon. I especially like the little nuggets of tendon, because they are soft and succulent in the hot broth. I can’t exactly say I love the tripe, but I have come to appreciate the…unique…texture enough to enjoy it when it’s there. This restaurant doesn’t offer either of those in their soup, unfortunately, but I get that they are trying to appeal to customers more than score points for authenticity. So this bowl was just sirloin and brisket. Good, not great, but perfectly acceptble on a rainy Saturday afternoon in January.

They say that whatever you do on New Year’s Day is what you’ll be doing for the year. If I can eat a lot more pho in 2022, that would be very nice indeed.