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The Washingtonian list PHO HOT as


Dirt Cheap Eats 2008: Pho Hot

Reviewed by Todd Kliman , Ann Limpert , Cynthia Hacinli , Kate Nerenberg , Rina Rapuano

Pho Hot (7442 Little River Tpk., Annandale, 703-333-5955. You’ll get over the fake-flower decor in this soaring space as soon as you dip your spoon into a bowl of Vietnamese pho ($6.50 to $7.75). The hearty beef-based broth is unconventionally heavy on cloves and cinnamon and light on star anise, but it’s still complex and comforting with a bite of ginger.

Why Phở is so popular

First off, the real Phở place would not let you wait for so long. If you are hungry, waiting is killing.

Phở is a typical item of the Vietnamese cuisine. In Pho, we can find:

  1. A salad: Phở is served with bean sprout, the most nutritious of all vegetable, and mints such as basil and saw-leaf herb. Other mints can also be offered.
  2. A soup: the broth is always made in house. Its ingredients are as secret as Pentagon's most secret documents. The broth will make or break a Phở restaurant. It is slowly cooked from eight to ten hours with oxtail and beef bones or chicken whole and bones, and is infused with spices such as star anise, clove, ginger, cinnamon and coriander. At Phở Hot, we drain fats from our broth so that the clear broth is so nutritious that the die-hard Phở customers will not leave a single drop of that broth.
  3. A main course of meat, usually beef (chicken may be a great substitute) that you can ask for a variety of cuts and styles for your very own preference. Or to help with undecided customers, a sample of each will be included. Here at Phở Hot we also offer chicken, dark or white meat or combination.
  4. A variety of rice vermicelli. This is 100% rice. You can choose different sizes and types of vermicelli if you really know which one you like most.

So you actually have a four-course meal in one bowl of soup. How is about that?

But that is nothing, you can even ask for seafood Phở too.

If you have a chance to travel to Vietnam, for food, you only have to know one word Phở and you are speaking their language already. There, you will find that Phở is an "anytime of the day meal". It is quite appropriate to have Phở at any time during the day be it breakfast time, lunch time, brunch time, evening, late evening, etc.

And adhering to that tradition, we open here all day long until quite late in the evening.

So stop by anytime.

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