There’s something a little inappropriate about Pho Sure/Baoguette, Michael
Huynh’s new Vietnamese noodle-slash-sandwich joint in the West Village.
There are the kneeling Vietnamese maidens in barely-there tops plastered all over the wallpaper in a comely repeat pattern. And then, there’s the bull’s penis, practically waving at you from the menu.
Yes, that would be the sliced up genitals of a bull served either with pho or a simmering hot bowl of soup.
Feel uncomfortable yet?
In every relationship, there inevitably is that one early thing that you disagree on.
Ours was pancakes.
Mike, he’ll eat them any and every day of the week for breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. Me, I love me my sweets but even at brunch, give me noodles or a hunk of red meat and eggs over pretty pancakes anytime.
You learn to compromise, of course. And so over the last eight years, Marion Cunningham and I have become well-acquainted.
It always comes to this, a mad race to the finish.
I knew I was in trouble when I found myself slurping up the remnants
of a big bowl of beef ball noodles last week while plotting, mid-bite,
to have a second dinner at Swee Kee, a Hainanese chicken rice joint that’s been drawing crowds for decades.
There’s never enough time when it comes to eating in Singapore. And my last days there before heading back to New York are always filled with crazed eating marathons as I frantically squeeze in that one last bowl of prawn noodles, that one last dish of Hainanese curried squid, all to tide me over until my next trip back.
Inevitably, when I return to New York, there has to be a break.
The palate must be cleansed; the body needs a rest.
This time, I’d come back eager to rev up my stove again after weeks of squatting in my aunties’ kitchens. But, what to make?
The thing about returning to New York from a long trip halfway across the world is, your body does strange things. Like, popping awake all sparkly and chirpy the first moment the sun nudges it.
At 7 a.m., I call the Sis. “Let me guess–Mike’s still asleep and you’re jetlagged and bored.” She is, as we two say, corright.
I’m not quite sure what to do with myself that early on a Saturday. So I slip out to look for sausages.
There is a deep belief in these parts that the dead may be dead — but that little detail shouldn’t get in the way of serving them a good meal.
And so in Singaporean wet markets, alongside stalls selling vegetables and plump pigs’ trotters, you’ll find little places that hawk food of a different kind. Shelves will be filled with boxes of paper dumplings, chicken feet and other dimsum treats — the idea is to burn them as offerings so your deceased loved ones will get them on the Other Side.
I hadn’t seen one of these in a while, mostly because when I’m in these markets I tend to race over to stalls that sell food that I can actually eat.
Like, now. Not when I’m in the Big Upstairs shamelessly flirting with River Phoenix.