Ha Noi Pho

It's a shame that Ha Noi Pho's most recent press was in the crime blotter, because what this restaurant should be known for is its decidedly ESL menu and the dedication that the Phams and their crew put into the construction of the food. The soup broths are made daily, reduced down from shank-bone stocks, and the coolers are packed with strange flora and bits of fauna pretty much unseen outside of the mother country. Sawgrass, fishscale mint, the Vietnamese equivalent of Mexican buche (which I'm sure has a name, but I'm sure I don't know it) and blood all figure heavily in the prep here. Strange mushrooms that look exactly like miniature smurf houses tend to bob up from the bottom of otherwise placid soups; strange twists of unidentifiable meat lurk like stiff eels in the depths.

And it all tastes good. I'd had duck's blood before, had used it in my own kitchens, but until I came to Ha Noi Pho, I'd never cared for it beyond its capacity to mount a voluptuously glossy sauce. Here the blood is one of the main points of dinner, and I spear a small, dark triangle of the stuff the minute my bowl of shrimp and field crab and weird-thing-that-looks-like-a-boiled-penis soup (banh canh cua, number 38 on the regular menu) arrives. The thick duck's blood tastes gamey, salty (of course), slightly sweet. It tastes (somewhat obviously) of life, condensed. And as it rests in my mouth, for a moment I understand what it is that gets vampires so worked up.

The fried cha gio shrimp-and-pork egg rolls with lacy carrot and black shreds of mushroom are always murky and vile — good for about three bites, then awful and regrettable forever after — and I've had better pho ga (Vietnamese chicken soup) almost everywhere I've been dull enough to order it. But I've also had great beef pho here: pho tai sach with tender tripe and raw, shaved steak poached in broth with noodles and basil and a squeeze of lime, pho chin with brisket, bo vien with squeaky little meatballs. If I ever get to eat breakfast here, it will probably be pho — because in Vietnam, pho translates as breakfast, as well as lunch, dinner and late-night snack. Pho is hangover cure and comfort, party food and family food, and an all-day answer for "What's to eat?"

But there's much more than pho at Ha Noi Pho. The bun bo Hue (Hue-style noodle soup with an iridescent slick of oil on the top) is singularly amazing, with a flavor like drinking fire. And the combination vermicelli plates (all of which have literalist Vietnamese names too long to bother reproducing) are like mini-buffets stocked with everything that makes foodies go nuts for Southeast Asian cuisines: fresh, dewy vegetables; mounds of pure white noodles; fragrant fish sauce speckled with chile flakes; perfectly charred prawns curled like fat commas on the plate; and beautiful, fatty, spit-grilled pork served either as succulent knots of flesh about the size of a baby's fist or (and I love this) julienned in a perfect imitation of the technique of the French chefs who are the only people in thousands of years of history to have conquered the Vietnamese people completely.

I've spent nights here beside the long mirrors, slurping noodles, talking with the staff (trying to, anyway) and sending Phuoc scrambling into the back to quiz his cooks about this ingredient, that preparation. Once, I'm pretty sure he called Vietnam when he couldn't answer one of my questions himself — and this is a man who went all kinds of bamboo preparing to open his place: going back to the old country, researching proper flavors, proper technique.

On slow nights, most of the staff will sit clustered around a table near the front, watching the TVs hung from the ceiling or playing cards, and the whole restaurant takes on the cast of a private social club for small, wiry Asian line cooks and waitresses. Still, the best meals I've had here were on nights when the kitchen was cooking for no one but me: smashing the crabs, slicing the congealed blood, cleaning the tripe for a single fanatic customer. And even on busier visits, when I do something weird like order two Vietnamese coffees just before midnight or squirt sriracha into my pho, the worst I ever get is a cocked eyebrow or a confused shake of the head.

One of these days, I'm going to make it to Ha Noi for breakfast. I have no idea who will be there then, what I will eat. But I know it'll be good, because almost everything at Ha Noi is. And I know it'll be genuine, because this is a kitchen that doesn't work any other way. And in the meantime, I'll keep coming back after dark — in the evenings and late on the weekends — to eat blood and drink fire, trusting in luck and the beer-only bar to keep me out of trouble.

And should you show up after midnight on a Saturday and not see me, have no fear: I'm probably just standing in the bathroom, wondering what's for breakfast.