Comfort Food

Today was a gray, rainy spring day and I indulged in one of my favorite comfort foods for lunch - the Vietnamese soup, pho.

At Kim Houng's the piping hot #8 bowl with flank & brisket warms your face and your belly. It's served along with the usual suspects - a plate full of fragrant basil leaves, bean sprouts, jalapeños and limes. The perfectly glistening broth is slightly murky with marrow from the slow-cooked beef bones. The herbs and aromatics such as ginger, star anise, onion and cilantro wrap their exotic smells around your mind as you dig in with the Asian-style ladle. The broth is the perfect vehicle for the tender rice noodles that are slurped up (by me anyway) with happy and oblivious abandon.

Oh so good. I find that some of my best thinking is accomplished when I'm working a bowl of pho all by myself in this little family owned restaurant.