You know that odd time when you're out and about on the town for a specific reason and then you happen upon a wonderful oddity?
This is one of those times.
So Food Scavenger was in Chinatown for what else, but cheap, good Chinese food, when she happened to pass by a place from which the most pungent, heaven smell of pho was wafting from. Cue Food Scavenger's disbelief and reluctance to enter, because FS was here. In Downtown LA. In Chinatown. For Chinese food.
And yet. And yet. There was an ad in front of the store for Pho Filet Mignon for $5.50. And then there was that smell. That wonderful smell of traditional pho, of a broth that could take over both your stomach and mind.
It seems that this place used to be a cafe and deli. When Food Scavenger came, the place still retained the name of "Gigo's Cafe and Deli." Perhaps it'll change to something pho related. Although maybe not. People don't seem to be too distracted by this odd Italian name and the actual Vietnamese food inside and spotting the windows.
Gigo's Cafe and Deli (It's a Vietnamese pho place! Confused, yet?)
853 N. Broadway Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90012
213.229.8889
Price range $5-6 for pho
Inside, the place is manned by the owner and a single server, both Vietnamese. The single server was an old man, whose age could be anywhere between fifty and seventy, and the owner, forty and fifty. Oh, the merits of aging among Asian people. It's a wonder.
There's a quaintness to the place. Paintings or bric-a-brac photographs line the cream walls. You have your fruit still lifes, your blue and white schematic of a building on the walls. Lining the middle of the wall is a single intertwined vine of leaves - the kind of wallpaper reminescent of the old-timers of pho places in Houston, where Food Scavenger spent much of her formulated pho-childhood. There's a cafe-like atmosphere to the place, where families and bachelors and the young and restless all fit in alike. An appreciation of good pho, after all, is universal.
Customers flit in at all times, because pho can be eaten morning, afternoon, and evening depending on your wont. FS's family stopped by at the odd time of three in the afternoon to escape the heat and follow their noses to some place delicious. The pho dac biet and pho filet mignon were ordered and quickly consumed. The dac biet contained calf tail and bo vien and filet mignon, etc. The filet mignon as FS's brother told her was perfect, soft and chewy and more intensely flavorable than the usual slices of beef in pho tai. He pretty much inhaled the bowl's contents and then looked around for more (sometimes, for a late breakfast, he'll consume two large bowls of pho tai).
Oh, for love of pho, FS must visit this place again.
