No Vietnamese living in Vietnam makes phở broth at home. But every Vietnamese living outside Vietnam has prepared or eaten a homemade phở at least once, since expatriate Vietnamese can’t just leave the house and go to a phở kiosk on the street corner. In Saigon, there are probably as many phở sellers as there are alleyways. Each counter differs according to the precise balancing of its recipe, according to the proportions of its various ingredients: cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander seeds, star anise, cloves, ginger, oxtail, beef flank, beef bones, chicken bones, bavette, beef tendon, fish sauce, shallots, chopped onion, fresh coriander, culantro, Thai basil, bean sprouts, rice vermicelli, pepper, fresh chili pepper, pepper sauce.
It’s impossible to reproduce these broths at home, cooked in cauldrons that, for two or three decades, have been used to cook and to combine ingredients, an intimate space for slow exchanges, shy aromas, and the noblest of perfumes. If scientists were to make a close study of those vessels, they would find traces of their owners’ taste buds—the cinnamon rising first from the cauldron of the woman on Hạ Hồi Street, while that of her neighbour was set apart by the burnt scent of grilled ginger. The variations number at least twenty-four to the power of twenty-four. Everyone has their favourite spot: friends exchange addresses, lovers are drawn to the first bowl they shared together, schoolchildren make their choices according to size and quantity. Families return, nostalgic, to the same place, generation after generation.
Once upon a time, Louis savoured the soups prepared to other clients’ tastes. Nothing was wasted, because he grabbed the bowls as soon as the clients rose from their stools. If he didn’t hurry, the waiters would pour what was left into a pail that went to the pigs. In time, he learned to recognize the clients by what was left of their soup. There was the one who always scented her phở with ten or fifteen basil leaves that she frantically tore from their stems while her sister emptied the plate of bean sprouts into her bowl. The bodybuilder client dropped a raw egg into the soup along with an extra ladle of fat. Louis became accustomed to pepper thanks to a very old woman who coloured her soup red. He always wondered whether the woman’s eyesight had deteriorated or if her taste buds had become numb from her having spent so much time scolding people. The owner of the stall muttered that only the hugely jealous ate such hot spice.
Louis was the sum of all those clients.
Art by Louis Boudreault