"The unspoken rule of pho is: Don't mess with pho," Peter Cuong Franklin, founder and head chef at Anan Saigon, a one-Michelin-star restaurant, told Business Insider .
Peter Cuong Franklin left Vietnam as a child, earned a degree from Yale University, and had a career in investment banking in the United States. But Franklin decided to take a different path: He left the United States, studied cooking at Le Cordon Bleu in Bangkok, worked with some of the world's best chefs, and opened two Vietnamese restaurants in Hong Kong.
1 Michelin star restaurant located in Old Market area, District 1
In 2017, he returned to Vietnam to settle down and opened Anan Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City. Six years later, Anan Saigon is one of the 50 best restaurants in Asia, has a Michelin star and has been introduced by newspapers including The New York Times and Time .
Franklin is at the forefront of a movement he calls Nouveau Cuisine, or New Vietnamese Cuisine. As the Michelin Guide wrote in 2018, Franklin's creations "connect traditional cuisine with modern techniques and presentation."
What’s special is that Franklin’s new restaurant only serves pho, Vietnam’s revered national dish. And pho here is not simple, first of all at a price of $100 – about 50 times more expensive than a standard bowl of pho in Vietnam.
Traditional pho is created with a different style.
“A $100 bowl of pho is no longer a strange thing,” said Nguyen Manh Hung, author of five cookbooks and host of a cooking show on Vietnamese television. He said that at that price, well-off Ho Chi Minh City residents are still happy to spend money on new experiences.
How did Franklin open a modern Vietnamese restaurant focused on pho in a city where pho is everywhere? Is it a real deal or just a marketing ploy to get attention?
Pot Au Pho, a new restaurant that sells $100 bowls of pho, is located in the Old Market area (District 1), one of the city's cornerstone commercial centers, which has been around for decades and is most vibrant in the morning.
The pho restaurant is located in the same building as Michelin-starred Anan Saigon and Nhau Nhau, the cocktail bar headed by Franklin.
$100 Pho Appetizer
Dining tables filled with lively conversation and the clinking of cutlery combine to create an atmosphere reminiscent of a restaurant scene in central London or New York.
Guests can enjoy a "Phojito" drink - a mojito mixed with herbs and spices like the pho bowl. This is one of the drinks included in the price of the pho bowl. And the $100 pho bowl can serve two people.
So for $100, you can get two “phojitos,” two Vietnamese sandwiches, and a bowl of plain noodles to share. This is a fairly common price for a dinner for two at a high-end restaurant in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City.
“This is not just a meal, it's an experience,” Franklin asserts.
The pho portion is packed with everything, a deep stone bowl of rich broth, with six different cuts of beef, including marrow and homemade sausage, plus wagyu beef for rare on the side. A smaller ceramic bowl holds the pho noodles, soft but not soggy, chewy but not tough; the raw egg yolk is served in a bowl, representing the way many Hanoians eat pho: The yolk has to be scooped out and eaten in one bite.
But it's the side dishes and dipping sauces that make the meal special, elevating it to the next level: chopped fresh chillies, a slice of lime, chilli sauce, truffles, bean sprouts, shallots and a green salad with basil, mint, coriander, cilantro, perilla and dill.
A $100 pho portion can be shared by two people.
Normally, diners season their pho as soon as it arrives, with lime, chili, and a sprinkling of herbs. Each bite tastes more or less the same. But this $100 pho is like a routine acrobatics for the taste buds. It’s a spontaneous sequence of sips, each different from the last.
Franklin is a proponent of traditional pho and believes that visitors should try pho around the country to see which type they like best.
At Pot Au Pho, Peter Cuong Franklin has succeeded in creating a dish that draws on the core elements of pho but still creates a memorable culinary experience.
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