An icky restaurant visit
Sep. 16th, 2005 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI had occasion this afternoon, since some errand took me into downtown, to eat at a rather broad hole in the wall on 3rd and Pine called simply the "New Vietnamese Restaurant," a clever name if ever there was one. A tattered "Grand Opening!" sign hung over the door; it had clearly been used before and probably left out in the weather well into its middle age. I decided to try it. I'm fond of Pho soup and it had been too long since my last dose.
The inside of the restaurant was clean and businesslike, but busy. I was later to find this surprising. I ordered the beef Pho, and it came quickly.
What I got was a bowl of very disappointing pho. The noodles, which are usually thick in the bowl, were amassed at the bottom in a sticky, glassy glob that came apart only with vigorous teasing of the chopsticks. The meat was a desultory combination of thin slices of brisket and globs of thick-sliced gristle in the alarming shapes of a cat's paw. As I probed deeper, I found something curled upon itself, a thick, whitish noodle-like thing with smaller tentacles sprouting off of it, all covered in little knobs like infected hair follicles, a strange sort of garnish for a soup served to Elder Gods. I didn't try to eat it, but another piece elsewhere in the bowl did make its way into my mouth, hidden within those glassy noodles. It had a rubbery texture that created high-pitched squeaking noises in my skull when bitten down upon.
It's rare that I don't finish a bowl of pho. I did not finish this one.
The inside of the restaurant was clean and businesslike, but busy. I was later to find this surprising. I ordered the beef Pho, and it came quickly.
What I got was a bowl of very disappointing pho. The noodles, which are usually thick in the bowl, were amassed at the bottom in a sticky, glassy glob that came apart only with vigorous teasing of the chopsticks. The meat was a desultory combination of thin slices of brisket and globs of thick-sliced gristle in the alarming shapes of a cat's paw. As I probed deeper, I found something curled upon itself, a thick, whitish noodle-like thing with smaller tentacles sprouting off of it, all covered in little knobs like infected hair follicles, a strange sort of garnish for a soup served to Elder Gods. I didn't try to eat it, but another piece elsewhere in the bowl did make its way into my mouth, hidden within those glassy noodles. It had a rubbery texture that created high-pitched squeaking noises in my skull when bitten down upon.
It's rare that I don't finish a bowl of pho. I did not finish this one.
