Pho, please

I think that the first time I had pho was sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s. My supervisor at the State Long Term Care agency had invited me to a pho noodle place a few blocks from work. The soup was tasty, but managing the rice noodles with chop sticks was a bit of a challenge. A few years later, I had this Vietnamese dish in a noodle house in north Austin. I had begun to develop a taste for it.

When I worked with my friend Cornelio Nouel at United Healthcare in the mid 2000s, we were housed in a business park on Loop 360. On the first floor, there was a little lunch place run by a 30-something Vietnamese lady who was cheerful and gregarious. Her menu included salads, pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, pizza slices, and pho. At lunch, Cornelio and I would visit the little eatery and have whatever tickled our fancy that day, and then we would walk around the building premises that bordered on a greenbelt. Those days we often had pho for lunch.

I recall one day that we ordered our usual fare, and our hostess mentioned that her uncle had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. I smiled and congratulated her and her family. She explained that her uncle was a monk who lived in Vietnam, and that he had been nominated for the prize by Martin Luther King. I was impressed, of course, but I had no idea who her uncle might be.

As the days passed, I did some online searches that eventually revealed that her uncle was none other than Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. This was all ten or fifteen years ago. Some days, the world seems much smaller than it does on others.

I still enjoy a bowl of pho now and then; sadly, the COVID apocalypse has led to the closing of some of our favorite eateries including the pho restaurants that we have enjoyed these past ten years. Last night, I planned to make chalupas for tonight’s supper; I have all the ingredients. Sitting on the deck this evening, I told Susan that I suddenly felt the need for pho. I could make chalupas tomorrow.

A quick Google search revealed that we had a noodle house just a few miles away. It would accept online orders for home delivery. We ordered Vietnamese food for supper – pho for me and bun for Susan. The name of the place is “Pho Please” on Riverside drive. The name seemed so fitting.

An hour later, we were sitting at our own table having Vietnamese fare for supper. The pho was quite tasty, and the company was, as usual, excellent.

See: Engaged Buddhism / Rewilding: Healing, Regeneration and Transformation for the Land. | Plum Village
and Thích Nhất Hạnh – Wikipedia.