On Eating Pho

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I'm sat in a doorway on a plastic stool. My knees are around my ears, it's seven thirty and already my shirt is sticking to my back, after a week in sandals my work shoes feel heavy and uncomfortable. A small Vietnamese woman is perched in front of me next to her is a huge steaming vat of watery stock. She pulls up a metal basket from the container which is full of noodles, stock drips back into the vat and a puff of steam rises. She pours the noodles into the bowl and adds some chopped chicken and then ladles stock into the bowl. I balance the bowl carefully on one knee and start to pull the noodles up to my mouth, the stock drips and I try to make sure it ends in the bowl rather than over my work trousers.

This fine balancing act was my introduction to phở gà, noodle soup with chicken, eaten on the way to my first day at my new job. This was also one of the more basic experiences but I carried on eating pho throughout my stay in Hanoi.

Pho joints share many things in common, they usually involve plastic chairs and tables. The chicken is pre-cooked and then hung up in the front of the shop. For each bowl the women will take down a chicken and hack off some parts and drop them into your bowl, if you're lucky you'll get some edible meat. Once served I take my chopsticks and push the chicken meat to the bottom of the hot stock to make sure it gets cooked as well as possible.

With pho you are given a basket full of fresh salad and herbs, I take take this and push the herbs into the soup, add three of four fresh red chilli pieces and squeeze half a lime over the top. Each table has a choice of soy sauce or chilli sauce, I always add some chilli sauce, Flying Goose Sriracha being my favourite.

Eating pho can be a tricky business, the noodles clump together and are covered in stock. The stock drips everywhere and makes holding onto the noodles harder. My trick is to get right over the bowl and pull the noodles up into my mouth, then reach down and pull up any trailing noodles.

In the UK it is possible to buy many of the ingredients required, pho noodles and Flying Goose Sriracha chilli sauce are all available in chinese supermarkets. We grow Vietnamese coriander and Thai basil in our garden. You can also use mint, rocket, pac choi and fennel to create an excellent herb salad. Sitting down to a bowl of pho before going to work in Manchester takes me back to those steamy mornings in Hanoi.

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