I know you guys are reading, but you are being very quiet. shhhh....
The Barnseyard is back! But different! But better? DB and MC have launched an exciting new movie blog that's going to be really interactive. They are starting their screening series with three different Antonioni movies, which is three Antonioni movies too many. Just watch half of one and you will get the gist. The post on the history of the e street film society is really funny.
I am feeling sick and thought pho sounded good but I am in (fucking) Davis so where to go? The CoHo offers horrible pho, kind of a CoHoHoPho situation if you will. I recently noticed that there is a Pho King 4 in Davis. It could have been there forever for all I know - I just assume all food in Davis is terrible so I don't pay much attention. But I love Pho King 2 in Sac and perhaps it is related?
I walked over there and got seated upstairs in a disgusting carpeted dining room. I get a large pho, which was really a medium as the sizes go small large extra large. I got the steak (note I did not say "rare steak", which is not on offer and the steak is a million miles from rare when it arrives) and brisket. I would not risk getting tendon at an unfamiliar place.
There was a meager plate of thai basil and a few bean sprouts to accompany the pho, the broth of which mostly tasted like salt. The noodles were fine. The meat was brown and meat-ish flavored. I put a bunch of cock sauce in it and it was passable but I won't be eating there again. If it is related to Pho King 2 it is clearly falling prey to the flavor vortex under the causeway that pulls all the goodness out of food.
I'm curious to know what DB thinks of Kiss Me Stupid, the Billy Wilder movie. Dean Martin is pretty funny in it (his toast: drink up and be somebody) but I read that it was supposed to be made with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon instead of Kim Novak and Ray Winston. Ray Winston really kind of ruins the movie. Anyone else seen it?
I've only bought the CoHoPho once and it was just by default of being too sick/tired to crawl off any further than I had to from my office to get food. Otherwise I sometimes buy Davis Noodle City's Mustard Green Soup and even then, the broth is pretty bland.
ReplyDeleteI tried sitting through Kiss Me Stupid after staying in the Kim Novak room at a guesthouse in New York and the poster was over my bed. Definitely not one of Novak's better movies, although the town being Climax, Nevada made me laugh.
I think Pho King 4 in Davis is going on its 2nd or 3rd year in operation. It replaced the surprisingly long-lasting Orange Hut Chinese restaurant which was in that location since at least the very early 90s when I first noticed it. Orange Hut was only open for lunch for maybe three hours per day. They had an opening time like 11:15am or something kinda random like that. I ate there twice, and both time, it was by insultingly sub-mediocre, overpriced, and had slow, inattentive service.
ReplyDeleteOrange Hut - sounds so amazingly bad!
ReplyDelete-miller
ha oh ya!
ReplyDeleteI forget to mention that the bill for the pho was 8.50! for a "large" bowl that was actually a medium. they didn't even have scallion. Imagine the decision there to save a couple hundred bucks a year with that
Why even bother to impress anyone with a good bowl of pho when all the Vietnamese students with Yelp accounts were gonna slag it the same way ("It doesn't compare to the pho in San Jose")?
ReplyDeleteI love "Kiss Me Stupid", but I do agree that Ray Winston is the weak link. It was originally supposed to be Peter Sellers in the part, but he suffered numerous heart attacks before shooting started.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's not MC, it's Mike Dub.