"How Not to Eat Pho: Me and Asia America" (excerpt)
by Michael Sue
I was brought up as a kid on a daily helping of good ol’ American hot dogs and beans, so one can imagine how different a bowl of Vietnamese pho would have tasted to a college kid who had been taught all his life that “it was okay to like Asian food, but just not to let other people see you eat it.” As a third- generation Chinese American on my mom’s side and as a fourth-generation on my dad’s side, I grew up in a world where I was discouraged to reveal or express my Asian identity. I was taught that if I brought any Chinese food to lunch, the other kids would look at my food, laugh and point their finger at me, and say that I was strange, different, was not a real American but “Chinese.” Accordingly, I grew up believing that eating Asian food meant you were a foreigner and un-American. Foreigner or not, when I had my first taste of pho my sophomore year, it was love at first taste. For those unfortunate souls who have not experienced pho, it’s a Vietnamese rice-noodle soup in a beef or chicken broth, served with bean sprouts, green onion and cilantro, basil leaves, and different meat strips and meatballs. To enjoy pho fully, most people flavor the taste of its broth, kinda sweet and salty, by adding lemon, hoisin sauce, and red chili sauce. In fact, it’s exactly this sweet and salty taste that everybody strives for when they’re adding their different ingredients. Everybody wants to get the pho just right. Unfortunately, I never do and always seem “to be looking for pho in all the wrong places.” Rather than my pho “hitting the spot,” my bowl almost kills me. Strangely enough, though, it is from these “pho fiascos” that I have gained a better understanding of who I am as an Asian American.
It starts simply enough. I have the big bowl of pho in front of me, and as soon as I sit down, I instantly put some hoisin sauce into the bowl without even thinking. I don’t put too much in, however, just enough to make the soup look black. Then I add the red chili sauce to give it that extra kick, and that’s when things start to turn dark. Thinking that the soup could use more hoisin, I add some more. Then I add more red chili. Then I add hoisin. Before I know it, my tongue starts to burn and my eyes tears up. Moreover, I’m only about five minutes into it; I practically have a full bowl left. But like any good American schmo, I think to myself that I just can’t leave the bowl right there; I have to finish that baby up. So, thinking that I can somehow beat the “pho game,” I add more hoisin sauce in the hopes that the hoisin will somehow overpower the chili sauce, but that only worsens it. I am in tremendous pain, both mentally and physically, not only because of the extreme heat from the sauce but because of the humiliation of the situation. I’m literally crying over a bowl of pho.