HANOI – At about 7 o’clock, the restaurant of Cham Pho is filled with customers. The owner of the restaurant shuffles pho, hands full of water, arranges chicken …
Entering the door of the perennial pho restaurant on Yen Ninh Street, diners will find a stainless steel table filled with trays of ready-made chicken, young eggs, intestines, gizzards, liver, egg yolks … Suspiciously. If you do not know in advance, many people may be surprised when they pay. Because each bowl of pho normally costs 3$. Customers order more thighs, wings, bare eggs … the average price is from 2$ to 5$ each.
The owner is Ms. Cham, 53 years old, from Hanoi, and gets up every day at 3am to prepare ingredients. Having been open for more than 20 years, but Ms. Cham does not accept her pho shop as a family heirloom. She thinks “heirloom” is not a word that guarantees good pho. “Selling is a predestined relationship. If I do my conscientiousness, if the food is quality, customers will find it by themselves and want to come back to enjoy it,” she said.
She revealed that the secret to keeping customers is a bowl of pure natural pho, not using MSG. Guests who come to eat see her directly processing, only adding a little white salt for a rich flavor. Family members and girls in the family do not know what she prepares, so every time the owner has unexpected business, the shop also temporarily stops selling.
Diners coming here are mostly patrons, office workers, and civil servants around the area. Some diners believe that price is the problem that makes many people most anxious when coming to the restaurant because a bowl of pho can be up to 4$ – 7$, three or four times higher than the average 2$.
Mr. Pham Quy Thanh, a freelance business (Hang Bun, Hanoi), who is a regular customer of the restaurant, thinks that it is difficult to find the taste of pho like here. “Expensive, cheap depending on each person, but for me it is quite worthy. Chicken choose well, sure meat, fragrant broth, with lemon leaves to eat,” he said.
Another acquaintance said that eating chicken noodle soup at this address since a young age, suggesting to go to the restaurant early – before 8:00, to have a full choice from liver, young eggs to boneless chicken legs, or thighs, wings.
The shop is open for sale from 7 am to 12 pm daily. The space of the restaurant consists of 2 floors, the area is quite narrow, the tables and chairs are small. Please note that you should arrive early to avoid the rush hour at 9am, or move by public transport due to lack of parking space. Follow vnexpress