"Pho"n with Noodles

I'm sitting with some good friends at a small table in a crowded, slightly loud restaurant.  I'm starving. Within seconds all of my senses are bombarded at once. The smell of beef stock simmering in the kitchen permeates the air, I can hear the slurping of noodles, and on all sides I see huge bowls of everything right in the world being devoured by those fortunate enough to have been in front of me in line. Salivation soon follows. The waiter comes to take our order and I am still trying to decide between the ox tail and the number one (tripe, rare beef, brisket, and beef tendon) I go with the number one and in a few short minutes...bliss.

This, in a nutshell, describes my first experience at Thanh Binh II. I was no stranger to pho, but my previous experiences were mediocre at best... there's not much of a Vietnamese population in South Carolina where I used to live, and the pho that you could find was catered to white people who (like me) had never eaten the good stuff. But sitting there with a big, steaming bowl of noodle soup, loaded with enough chili paste to make the devil himself break out in a sweat, I knew that I could never go back. I was hooked.

Only one downside: Every time I've gone to Thanh Binh II, I have felt like I've been gypped on the amount of protein I get in my pho, particularly the tripe and tendon. There tends to be a lot of rare beef, a little less brisket, a low to moderate amount of tripe, and next to no tendon, which is a problem for me because the gelatinous, melt in your mouth, oh so perfectly squishy tendon is my favorite part. Other than that, it's great, and whenever I get a craving for pho, this is the first place on my list. (Oh, and in case you were wondering, the next time I went I got the ox tail, it's delicious)