The Majesty that is Pho

image stolen from Yahoo!'s Singapore Travel Guide

Here's my review of many of the local Pho Restaurants.
If you're ever in the Northern Virginia area, and need a good Pho Phix, please use my handy guide, and I'll hook ya right up.
Note - these were all carry-out orders, so rather than getting a bowl of soup, they provide you with a pho kit to take home and assemble. It's part of the phun. Plus you can take it home where you can drink your own cheap beer, rather than paying $2.50 and up for a hooch of similar quality. All charge an additional $0.50 per carry-out item.

Very nice pholks. Very greasy broth, which many say contributes to the authenticity. This was greasy enough that I felt as if I had applied lip balm after having eaten it. They get extra points for a large cup of hoison/siriacha sauce and way too generous a portion of basil, but lose points for skimping on the bean sprouts and forgetting the lime wedge and jalapeno peppers.

Update!!! - Went there a second time, made the mistake of asking for the beef soup and not ordering by number. I got all kinds of weird stuff I refused to add to the broth. Let this be a lesson - order by number!!!

Named after the wife of the couple who owns the place.
Praises: great broth, which is very important.
Complaints: Smaller portions, which I've learned to live with (I need to un-Super-Size myself, anyway).
I'm happy to go with quality over quantity. I always have to ask for an extra cup of hoison sauce, with which they happily provide me. I've been their so many times they know me by number: 13, which is the Pho with slices of eye round steak. Phriendly pholk.
They also serve a very good grilled pork.
They'll remain my favorite within 5 miles of my apartment.

This place specializes in Vietnamese noodle soup. I happen to know that this place is quite authentic - they make the broth the old fashion way, by boiling the beef bones, and they leave in the fat. I know this because one of my co-worker's parents own the place.
Honestly, this place isn't my favorite. The broth seems to be lacking a bit on the five-spice. However, these folks make sure you get more than your money's worth. When you order a large bowl of soup for take-out, they go way over normal portions. Rather than stuffing a few bean sprouts in a compartment of a styrofoam container, they give you a big bag of them - as big as you'd sanely purchase at a grocery store. They give you at least one lime wedge, as many as four. They don't skimp on the jalapeno, the meat, or the basil, either. No pho restaurant in the area will fill you up as Pho Hong Anh.

Another place that specializes in pho. You can tell just from looking at the layout of the restaurant: they all have rows of long tables butted against one another on which the patrons eat picnic style. I generally don't like those kind of places - it usually doesn't seem as good. A nice lady always takes my to-go order and wonders why I don't have the time to eat it there.
I'll say that this is my second favorite place to go. One because it's sort of on the way home, and two because it's a few doors down by one of those wacky Asian markets where you can get anything out of the ocean in freeze-dried form, including a freeze dried fruit flavored squid snack.
Anyway, the soup is pretty good.

Pretty good, really. Great broth, good portions. They were anxious for me to come back to let them know what I thought of their soup. Overall satisfying, though I'll need to go back to make sure. For now, my rating is:

Note, the icon came from this site: ClipArt.com