hat makes pho universally loved?
Sacramento restaurateur, chef and cookbook author Mai Pham points out that Vietnamese food offers an appealing flavor profile to the U.S. palate: "Most of the ingredients are very familiar. It's fresh and not so spicy. Visually it's easy to see. It's not mysterious.''
A smart businesswoman with foresight, Pham partnered with StockPot, a Campbell Soup Co. subsidiary in Seattle, to develop a commercial pho broth. Though made of chicken, the broth contains the bold spice notes and sweet-salty flavors found in typical beef pho.
At San Jose State University, Executive Chef Jay Marshall uses the StockPot product at an Asian noodle soup bar where diners get to pick and choose from an array of rice noodles, vegetables, herbs and protein. Because there are plenty of pho shops near campus, the chef decided to use the product to offer a more non-traditional bowl of pho. "Our students love it,'' Marshall says. "People across the board eat it. It's not tied to any nationality.''
How pho came to be is a murky issue. While scholars, cooks and diners agree that pho was invented in the early part of the 20th century in northern Vietnam, no one is certain of the specifics.