Pho Hoa cooks up a winning taste overhaul

I had just finished writing something. I felt bloated from too much fat, too much starch and too much MSG from the previous night. I knew I'd throw up if I saw another stir-fried dish.

Yet one still had to eat, even if much of what one wrote was total crap. Food, after all, is to be sought and relished, not squandered or slogged out on exercise bikes as one would an unwanted acquisition. But the question was: What kind of food?

Then the vision hit me, gyrating delectably before my eyes: A bowl of piping hot soup at Pho Hoa. Its fragrant, wholesome steam lingered seductively in my mind, and, as it percolated further into the winding canals of my consciousness, I just knew I had to get up and go.

At last, there I was, by the window, in the strategic South Jakarta Pho Hoa branch on Jl. Barito. Shifting my gaze to the familiar terrain outside, where I spent many a juvenile moment at the Tarakanita Elementary School just across the road, envisaging what life had in store for me, I felt an odd sense of deja vu.

Everything around me seemed as starkly temporal as the bright, no-holds-barred lighting; the incessant prattle of Generation X as it tried to establish what's hip and what's not; the bemused expression of senior onlookers, toned down by greater, more immediate afflictions, and the perpetual reverie that seemed to envelop the 13-odd waiters in attendance.

What difference did this opinionated buzz make to the listless drone of a bunch of adolescent high schoolers? The future is the perpetual object of musings, always looming close somewhere in the not-too-distant horizon, always implicit, always unpredictable. As unpredictable, even, as the taste of that piping hot soup as it now sat before me.

True, it had been a while. The reason? Having suffered a protracted separation anxiety with the best Vietnamese beef noodle soup in the world (in a sleazy, dilapidated hotel in Dalat, a six-hour drive north of Saigon) I think an "attitude" is pretty much in order.

And, indeed, Pho Hoa is neither big-ticket nor homespun, another international franchise scrambling for a market niche by peddling the sweet promises of authenticity. But while blandness used to be the first noun that came to mind, the menu has a potent, though not always apparent, appeal in the promise of wholesomeness, which in itself is already a welcome respite.

So when on that particular day, this expectation was met, and exceeded, I not only awoke from my contemplative stupor, but plunged headlong into the conversational equivalent of Seize the Day. The taste has been, for lack of a better word, upgraded. It wasn't just the generous heaping of the different parts of the cow, bless its soul (my partner, characteristically, went for the large portion of The Lot, which included eye of round, well-done brisket and flank). Nor was it the raw chili accompaniment, or the coriander leaf, which could only do so much to accentuate any given food.

But, more than anything, it was the broth, which, for the first time, bore the dormant hallmarks of epicurean finesse. Not quite there yet, as critics often love to say, but "definitely got potential". In the darker days, I used to add dollops of Hoisin sauce to jazz up this mainstay of the Vietnamese diet. But, basking in the enjoyment of reaffirming my purist tendencies, I even endured my partner's blather about nothing in particular, gleefully finding him the bastion of wit.

I'll even revise what I used to say about eating Pho Hoa's Beef Noodle Soup only to ward off impending flu. Now, I'll eat Pho Hoa's Beef Noodle Soup any day.

Even the Vermicelli with Spicy Chicken Lemon Grass, which didn't really need much spicing up, was also subjected to a taste overhaul. If it had been presented as a dainty three-tiered mound on a milk-white Wedgewood platter, I'd say it could have gone straight to The Regent's Asiatique, trimmed into an elegant appetizer, and acquired itself a different price tag.

The curious absence of oil precluded the possibility of the chicken chunks being stir-fried, yet how could they not be? And splendidly so, I might add, thanks to the appreciably increased lemon grass, hot chili pepper, raw chili, giap cha and garlic chive level in the mixture. Spread over cold, steamed vermicelli atop diced lettuce and cucumber sprinkled only very slightly with light sesame oil, the combination made for an aromatically pesky tongue-teaser worth every bit of its Rp 9,000 (US$3.45).

Some words of advice. Lovely and intriguing as the Vietnamese Iced Coffee might look, it's easy to end up with too strong a brew as the single purposeness of eating might just stop us from rescuing it in time from its individual percolators. Coffee's hot-heavy tendency, as you may well appreciate, is jarringly incongruous to all the aforesaid lightness. Better to go with tea, especially the chrysanthemum kind if you can get it (which I doubted, and therefore didn't do myself).

As for the place itself, expect no groove and grunge, just neighborhood-joint informal, a well-scrubbed refectory that looks as wholesome and simple as its food. The menu is accordingly concise: Five beef-related variations to the one soup, two vermicelli dishes, two rice dishes, the occasional extras. Efficiency predominates, at least in theory if not in practice, as waitresses exercise their mental arithmetic and shove the total under your nose. The moment of truth, however, is never hostile. You don't take discrepancies very seriously in this kind of place.

For only Rp 27,500 for two, I'll go again. There are many places to pick: Taman Anggrek Mall, the BRI II Building, the Jakarta Stock Exchange Building, the Kuningan Tower, and soon, the famous Sabang street in Central Jakarta. I guess it will only takes that all too familiar call for prudence, and I'll be on my way.

-- Epicurus