Day 23: Pho Garden (Yishan)

Today was another pho place, ugh. Once again, Niniane was conveniently absent, so I went to knock this place out with today's visitor, David Braginsky, an ex-Googler who is currently at Facebook. He came to visit and I treated him to lunch because he drove me to the emergency room at 3am a couple months ago after my tonsillectomy when a stitch came loose in my throat and I start coughing up blood. As you can see, these days I am the picture of health, so that harrowing night turned out well.

Luckily, today's pho restaurant turned out to be a class above the other two (I'd never been here), so it could credibly be called an actual thank-you lunch. You don't want to thank someone for driving you to the emergency room at 3am by taking them to the worst restaurant at the street. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of David and me (Niniane is usually the one who remembers that we have to take pictures), so all you have is this picture of the best calamari appetizer I've ever seen. It was pretty tasty too. In the corner you can see David's hand, which he uses to produce quite exceptional code.

This place is the home of that huge "2 lbs of Pho, 2 lbs of random meat products" bowl where if you eat the whole thing in under an hour, you get to keep the bowl or something. If you fail, you get a t-shirt. We both declined to try this challenge as we are both several years out of college, and instead got other dishes. I got a dish involving cubed filet mignon with garlic noodles and David got something similar but with rice. Neither of us got pho, and we appreciated the expanded menu sparing us of this. Both dishes were quite decent. If you have to eat pho on this street, this one is the place to go to - and it definitely qualifies for a mention in my other blog, Sucks Less Than Expected.

I think this is the last pho restaurant in the downtown area, thankfully.