Beef noodles (phở bò)

In 2005 I have been recommended to check a blog called "Noodlepie" by some English reporter living in Vietnam. He wrote about our street food. Reading his blog, I realized "Wow, so interesting, so many things that I never tried!"

And I never though that I will develop a food blog until today! Taking a break from business, and with support from a friend who is IT expert, I decided to start, to inspire myself by discovering those foods that we can easily find everywhere in Vietnam, on every street, in every corner!

I start my first food blog with a star "Beef Noodles"!

           Phở Minh in small alley on Pasteur street, right in the center of Saigon! 

          Phở Tàu Bay - one of my favorite beef noodles in Saigon! Open only in the morning!  

Beef noodles or as we call here "Phở bò" - one of the most popular and favorite street food for many many Vietnamese and foreigners. Nowadays it's easy to find Vietnamese beef noodles in the States or somewhere else outside Vietnam, but here the best! 

According to my friend, who is a big foodie, he said "There are three elements: beef, soup and noodles. Whenever we want to judge which Phở is the best, we should consider all these three!" He also said "no any Phở in Saigon can meet all three criteria!" 

Anyway we also divide into different groups: beef noodles in Northern style (Phở Tàu Bay, phở Dần), in Southern style (phở Hiền, phở Hòa), in Chinatown (phở Lệ)  and finally beef noodles by some overseas Vietnamese as Phở Hùng, Phở Ta!         

We can have beef noodles for breakfast, lunch or even dinner! Besides beef we still have phở gà (with chicken) or even with Fish. Few year ago there was one small restaurant on Nguyen Hue, they served Phở with Fish, quite good, but it was closed down long ago and I have no idea where they moved!

Anyhow beef is the most preferable compared with chicken or fish!  That's why people try to create phở bò with different kind of beefs : US beef, Kobe beef...and the latter will cost you around 100 USD per bowl! You find it in Hanoi! I tried Pho Bo in US, so many beef in my bowl, the beef is tender but by somehow the taste is not the same as here!

         The container of beef noodles' s soup at Phở Tàu Bay! 

Not easy to prepare Pho's soup, we need to follow special tips, special recipe with different ingredients...but one thing I can share with you what I heard from a person who is running famous Pho Hoa on Pasteur street!  There they never clean the big soup container, they use only the boiling water to clean after every business day, in order to keep the beef flavor! Anyway I have no clue, but at least that would be one of the secrets why Pho is so beef tasty!

       Phở Dần in Northern style 

Phở in South is different from Phở in North (Hanoi), taste different, eating way also different! Hanoi's Phở with clear soup, no veggies and probably no black soybean sauce...and with many "ajinomoto", but Phở originally comes from the North, so you still can find many good shops there as "Pho Gia Truyen" (tradition from one generation to another).

          Beef noodles with beef meatballs at Phở Lệ! 

         Beef noodles at Phở Hiền. Good soup, strong flavor of pepper, good noodles but beef is ok!  

Beef noodles will be more tasty if we add some herbs that we always see on the table! More flavors!
You can ask them to boil bean sprouts! And don't forget to squeeze a bit lime juice or slice of chili! Very good!

I will not say where is the best Phở in Sài gòn, but I recommend some of my favorite:

Phở Hoà on Pasteur street
Phở Hiền at 269 A Nguyễn Trải street
Phở Tàu Bay on Lý Thái Tổ street, open only in the morning, very crowded!
Phở Lệ on Nguyễn Trải and Võ Văn tần street!
All of them are good!

If you want to know about our beef noodles - here is the link to quite interesting site created by a big Phở lover!