Pho Van - Blackball (last reviewed April 2012)

I first visited this Vietnamese, low brow restaurant when I was recovering from a cold and needed something more than chicken noodle soup to get me over the hump. I ordered pho (pronounced /fah/) tai chin as a to go order and came with lots of stuff to assemble -- bean sprouts, hot paste, cilantro, lime, noodles and the meat (that's the tai chin part). It was quite the effort and after the fourth ingredient I got frustrated and dumped everything into the bowl. It was very unique and quite tasty although the meat had a funky sweet taste. Round 2 was a disaster. I took my bride back to Pho Booger and it started and ended wrong. We went to seat ourselves and the table nazi grunted for us to sit elsewhere. Next, I tried to make nice with the host by asking him if he knew my Vietnamese buddy and even flashed him a photo. Nope, never heard of him, don't recognize him and he looks Mexican to me. Thanks, for the hook-up, Bach. My wife was seated so that she was facing the kitchen and as it turns out, that was a big mistake. She had a look of horror and I calmly inquired. She said that the kitchen help also most have had a cold. I'll spare my faithful followers some of the details but let's just say this would have been a good time for hand sanitizer. (Note to self -- my policy here is to leave more than enough money for the drinks on the table and just walk out.) Lucky day, he brought out our food. My wife convinced me that only the top layer of beans my have been compromised and the steaming broth would kill any germs. I was hungrier than the Andes plane crash survivors and decided to do what I had to do. Needless to say, I didn't like it but then horror upon horror, my wife spots another picker in the kitchen. We declared it over, paid, rolled out. Blackball.