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| Hue's Bowl of Beef Pho |
Note: Our two experiences were written separately with no knowledge of what the other was going to say. Anything oddly similar should be chalked up to coincidence
Tommy's Experience
The restaurant itself was a little more chilled out than I expected given that it was lunchtime on a cold Friday afternoon. Maybe ten other diners were in attendance during the hour or so we were eating, which is totally fine given Hue's cozy vibe. We had picked Hue because we felt it made a good baseline to draw from moving forward. There isn't something overtly "authentic" feeling about Hue, but it doesn't stray too far from it's roots that it treads in to novelty territory. Also, the restaurant's popularity will give previous diners who are reading this a good comparative grasp moving forward.
Anyhow we were greeted, seated and given waters pretty much immediately. We were sat at a two-top parallel to the bar. This is cool except for the fact that they had a TV with ESPN on and I had Skip Bayless's hideous face scowling for most of my lunch; but this isn't Hue's fault so whatever. The service was appropriately casual and efficient, nothing too over-the-top and not in any way incompetent or lazy. While Lisa and I looked over the menu, pretending we might be getting something other than dueling bowls of beef pho, the server took our drink order. Fresh off of a shift, Lisa ordered the Hue lager. The Hue beer is made in Vietnam and has no connection to the restaurant outside of it's name. I ordered a Vietnamese coffee, which I had never had before. The coffee was rich and delicious and came with a side of sweetened condensed milk that you dabbled in to the coffee with a spoon. The coffee was good beyond expectation, so defying my anxiety and common sense I pounded a couple of these back over the course of my meal.
Then came the focal piece of our lunch, a giant bowl of beef pho. The pho itself was the pleasantly basic combination of beef, noodles and an herbaceous broth. I'm pretty sure the noodles aren't made in-house (because that would be insane) so let's focus on the dynamics of the other two components. The brisket and steak were cooked well done but maintained a degree of tenderness. I'm not familiar enough with the traditions of pho to know whether or not that the beef is traditionally prepared that way, but it worked well enough for the occasion. If I were attempting to make pho at home I would probably use raw beef and let the broth cook it, but that's just me. Then there was the broth. I don't like aggressive criticism of someone else's cooking, but the broth is just not for me. Something about Hue's broth just reminds me of a very mild beef flavored tea. I think it speaks for itself that we were both murdering our bowls with sriracha and hoison sauce.
Another tiny gripe I have about my experience was the totally meager portion of accouterments given to tweak our pho with. In my limited experience with pho, I've gotten pretty heaping portions of different things to season or add texture to customize my pho experience. Between the two of us we got two twigs of thai basil, about half of a jalapeño cut in to coins and probably no more than twenty sprouts. This want to seem like a kvetch about silly and minor things, but part of pho's appeal is the gargantuan portion it comes in, and a dinky little garnish plate just doesn't fit with that. This really isn't a huge deal for me, it just feels like a weird little cost management thing that gets under my skin.
The Verdict: Not bad but not especially memorable. I would totally go to Hue and eat pho again but not because i'm in the mood for some exponentially thoughtful or memorable meal. Picking up a friend from the airport who you haven't seen in a while and want to catch up? Take them to Hue. Do you have an older relative who wants to try something new without traveling too far from their comfort zone? Hue it up. It certainly doesn't boggle the mind, but it's a decent $20.00 lunch.
Lisa's Experience
(In which Lisa valiantly attempts to avoid making infinite pho puns so Tom doesn’t kill her.)
Hello, dear readers. This is Lisa, Tom’s partner in gluttony and the pursuit of food obsession. Tom and I finally got our acts together and met up for some pho last week, and now that my work week is over I actually have time/mental energy to immerse myself in the resultant indulgent pho musings. Let me set the scene: it’s Friday morning, and it’s cold. Like numb fingers, I-can’t-bear-to-peel-myself-out-of-my-flannel-sheets cold, even by the truly depraved standards of the average Wisconsinite (although to be fair, I did see a husky white guy wearing shorts, which I suppose means it’s still within the realm of normal Midwestern frigidity).
As Tom mentioned in his previous post, I’m a nurse, which pretty reliably translates to “I have a weird schedule” (among other things, i.e. I have a slightly deranged sense of humor, am almost impossible to gross out, etc), and I’m no exception. I work ten-hour night shifts for seven days in a row, then have off for a week. So, on the freezing morning in question I was 40 hours deep into my work week, had left work three hours before, and had allowed myself a 45 minute nap before meeting Tom. What I’m trying to say is that I was exhausted, freezing, and mildly delirious. In my experience, that’s the perfect time to eat pho. Granted, given that I am in the throes of a fairly overwhelming pho obsession (really holding back a pun here), I tend to be of the opinion that any time is the perfect time to eat pho. Do other people wake up thinking about pho, and how they can work it into their schedule that day? So far, I’ve found that isn’t typically the case, so this project is pretty much a dream come true (thanks for feeding my addiction, Tom).
Anyway, back to our frigid morning. Tom agreed to my request that we start at Hue, so together we hurtled through the increasingly forceful snow toward Bayview. Hue was the natural starting place for me, since at a mere ½ mile’s distance from my apartment, it’s currently my go-to pho place. It also, while not the first place I tried pho, was definitely where my obsession defiantly declared itself to me one hungover afternoon, and has continued to declare itself on each of my near weekly strolls for takeout. Tom and I arrived at about noon and were seated by the friendly server who always seems to be working and probably thinks I have a problem. We both got the basic beef pho, and I, feeling slightly deranged and emboldened by going out to eat when I should have been sleeping, also got a beer, while Tom stuck to Vietnamese coffee and its condensed milk decadence.
The place was pretty deserted, given the cold and the fact that it was a weekday and most of the normally-scheduled world was probably working and not traipsing around eating Vietnamese noodles. We sat at our little table and sipped our respective beverages, while the Talking Heads or something else sort of blandly agreeable played quietly in the background. Blandly agreeable is actually a fairly accurate description of Hue’s ambience overall: a little too bright, modern but not offensively so, and clientele that as far as I can tell is pretty consistently 100% white. Now, as an extremely white Midwestern girl myself, I don’t feel that I have the right to gauge the “authenticity” of a Vietnamese noodle joint, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say this place is pretty Americanized. There aren’t “icky” things like tripe or tendon or weirdly gelatinous little buns or things you can’t even identify while looking at a picture menu or, you know, Vietnamese people. There are crab Rangoon and the Talking Heads and a girl with face tattoos. To put it another way, if you want the sort of dingy-hole-in-the-wall-but-authentic-hidden-treasure feel, this is not your place.
The food came after only a few minutes, and all conversation effectively stopped and was predictably replaced with slurping, chopstick clinking, etc. The broth at Hue is lighter in color and sweeter than many places, with a strong anise and cinnamon flavor and just enough fat to it to make it sort of shimmer, while not being at all thick or heavy. I think that the broth could stand to have a more assertive feel to it, more spice or meat flavor or something, but I just compensated by adding all the available fixings (basil, sprouts, jalapeño, lime, white onion I demanded the server bring me because I need it to be as stinky as possible) along with serious amounts of sriracha and hoisin sauce. Without any of that, I think the broth would be too sweet and mild for me, but with everything added it was a pleasant combination of heat and sweetness.
The steak and brisket were tender and plentiful (although I’d love to see them served a little more rare, I’ve yet to encounter that in Milwaukee), there were appropriate proportions of noodle to broth to meat, and even after talking shit to Tom about how I was so hungry I was going to eat my entire giant bowl, I still had enough to take home another meal’s worth. The price of $11 seemed a bit steep for pho, but given the huge servings, clean atmosphere, and the prices of the surrounding restaurants, it didn’t seem appalling or anything to me.
Verdict: a good basic pho, I would probably come back here even if it wasn’t an 8 minute walk from my apartment.
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