Pho

After two glasses of wine I apparently return to the mental stage of a 5 months old: I need to suck on things. Forks, fingers, chopsticks. When presented with those cheap and crap chopsticks you get with every Chinese take-away, this habit can turn into a problem: mouth - or better lip ulscers. Shame, as Pho would otherwise have been a delightful experience. If only my lip was still in tact.
Before deciding to go to Pho, I did my homework (for a change) and checked various reviews about the place. That taught me basically two things: the common European who has never been to Vietnam loves the place. The Vietnamese and all other people who had the chance to eat the authentic stuff before hate it. As for me: I have been to Berlin. That might not sound like much when talking about Vietnamese food, but the Vietnamese dishes I had there was pretty marvellous. Ever since I believe to know when people talk about when praising the "real Pho". Shame that on the day of our visit neither Lydia nor me were in the mood for Pho.
Instead we had Bun (rice vermicelli with bean sprouts and peanuts) with lemongrass beef. And tiger prawn and mushroom curry. Just now, while trying to recall what we ate (whilst still nursing my lip ulscer) I realise that there wasn't much of a lemongrass flavour to the lemongrass beef. Apart from that, it was a decent dish. Not exciting and possibly quite easy to recreate at home: line a bowl with iceberg lettuce, top with bean spouts (a few of the reviews I read before mentioned the excessive use of beansprouts - quite right so), rice vermicelli, fried beef and crushed peanuts. Spices or salt? "Nah, why bother", the chef must clearly have thought.
I love Rick Stein. I love him for his love of salt. He wouldn't have been too happy with our Bun. With a dash of chilli and fish sauce however it turned out be be more than edible, quite nice actually.
The curry boasted much more flavour than the Bun. The prawns were succulent, the mushrooms firm and juicy. Still, the salt was missing. But again, a little fish sauce did the trick.
And although the housewine was of the cheap (but cheerful) side and the toilet unisex, the dinner turned out to be a pleasurable after work get-together.