restaurant: phở horn's

eating well is a terrible trap. for any specific food, one's best experience becomes a baseline against which all other examples are measured. northern virginia has now effectively ruined me for indian, pakistani, pollo a la brasa, korean, and vietnamese - specifically, phở. that said, i went out for phở today for the first time since the move to rhode island. the place - phở horn's (50 ann mary st, pawtucket ri) had looked pretty promising on my previous reconnaissance visit - they had durian shakes on the menu; the clientèle was split down the middle viet - latino. in the interest of further research, i went today for lunch. the cà phê sữa đá was pre-mixed in the back of the house. this is a serious deduction of points, bordering on a disqualification. half the pleasure of vietnamese iced coffee is watching it slowly drip throughout your meal, so that you can mix it yourself as a small and perfect dessert. getting it premixed forces you to either drink it prior to the phở (too weird) or wait and watch the ice melt (too watery). the phở xe lừa (locomotive style, the viet version of "kitchen sink") contained way too much mediocre steak and way too little tripe or tendon. the broth was okay, the garnishes were skimpy - not enough basil, no ngò gai. when i mentioned the lack of interesting meats to the owner, he seemed taken aback - this is the white man's dilemma. i'll write about it in another post. all things considered, it was a good lunch but nowhere near my NoVa baseline.

observation: a "horn" is the little hook sticking out of the o in the word "phở". did the owner of this restaurant really name it after a diacritic mark? because that's fucking awesome.