It has been our staple breakfast meal for the last 2 months. It would be a lie to say that we had eaten it every day, but I recon over the last 2 months we must have eaten this dish at least 40 times! Crazy. And we never got bored of it. In fact after only a few days in Cambodia we’ve found ourselves desperately hunting down an authentic Vietnamese Pho.

Each place has it’s own little variation on the dish, but the essential base is always the same. Flat rice noodles are heated in a big pan of boiling water and then popped in a bowl with some stock and sprinkled with chopped spring onion (or “onion leaf” – maybe chives?). The bowl is brought to your table along with a side plate of fresh herbs, bean sprouts, limes and chilis for you to add to taste. Amazing! It becomes a bit of a ritual. Before the bowl arrives you start picking the leaves off the herbs ready to drop into the soup when it arrives. Then it’s time to stir in a few bean sprouts, maybe a squeeze of lime, a dash of chili and then you’re off. It is such a refreshing breakfast. Even in the 30c heat we couldn’t get enough of the steaming bowls of spicy pho.

The stock itself is pretty damn tasty. The places that sell pho tend only to serve that one dish so you can be sure they have spent some time perfecting the saucy base.  I think this is the key. I always get suspicious if a restaurant has an overly long menu. How could they possibly cook all those things well? How could they have all the ingredients in fresh everyday? It’s just not possible. Here, where most of the stalls are actually based in or just outside a market, you can be fairly certain the fresh herbs, and crispy bean sprouts couldn’t be much fresher.

My favorite must have been the pho in Hoi An. They grow a special type of basil there, it has a slightly aniseedy/minty taste which was possibly addictive. Andy and I took a trip out to visit the farm that grew this stuff, Tra Que. It was pretty incredible. They used no chemical fertiliser at all, instead the land was fed with seaweed which broke down in just a few weeks giving them amazingly rich fertile soil.

I wonder how something like this could work in the UK? Compared at least to a cafe/restaurant at home the set up costs must be tiny! All the stalls are so basic, but after all, it’s just good, simple cheap food. What more do you need? A few small tables and plastic chairs, a couple of pans, some kind of heating equipment (normally fashioned from big plant pots by the looks of it) and a metal framed glass cabinet functioning as the preparation area, display, cash desk… This is why they can sell it for 40p rather than the £6 a noodle soup would cost you in the swanky surroundings of Tampopo. No branded napkins and matching crockery here. With plastic plates and bare plastered walls the food tastes just as good. It makes you wonder what it’s all about.

Here’s a small selection of the pho we ate. The more observant amongst you may pick out that some of these aren’t true pho, there are a few other types of noodle soup in there too. It’s guess the odd one out time! Extra points for identifying the type of noodle and name of that dish…