"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)

Bug-ger

There's the little fella!

I want to start by saying that I'm not too big on Pei Wei and other places like it in general. This is Southern California; there are countless great Chinese (and other Asian) restaurants that don't put corn syrup in every sauce and don't serve you what I can only assume is Uncle Ben's rice.  So, while there may be a smidge of bias in this review, my experience here was reprehensible, and had it occurred somewhere else, I would be writing it just as harshly...

I went to Pei Wei with some friends today for lunch. First, one of the soda machines had flat soda water, which wasn't that big of a deal (it happens), but what came later in the meal was a big deal...a big six legged deal. Two of my friends ordered a salad to split. After they had eaten half of it, one of them looked down and saw a dead roach sitting on her greens. We asked one of the employees to send over the manager, and watched as he told her about our table. The manager then looked at us, walked in the other direction, and went into the back room for about five minutes before making her way over to our table. When we told her, and showed her the bug, she looked at us and said (and I quote) "I'm so sorry, can I take that back and get you something else?" Are you kidding me? How about give us a refund...she almost ate a freakin roach! When we declined, she disappeared again and came back with some gift certificates (again, no refund, but gift certificates) To top it all off, she began to defend the fact that there was a roach in the food: (another direct quote) "When you use fresh produce like we do, sometimes there are bugs in it.  It just happens." BY FAR the worst excuse for a critter in a meal I've ever heard. I'm pretty sure that's why some restaurants wash their produce BEFORE serving it!

I'm looking forward to using those gift certificates though...I hear the spicy spider stir-fry is delicious.