Pho Nouveau, Boise
Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman
More than most cuisines, Vietnamese gives your taste buds the chance to sample the landscape from which that cuisine sprouts. In wine-speak it’s called terroir: the taste of place.
That flavorful physicality is embodied most clearly in the deep green tangle of fresh herbs called rau thom, or fragrant vegetables, that accompany many Viet dishes. Rau thom is a varied bouquet of both rare and recognizable plants ranging from shiso, Vietnamese coriander, fish mint, rice paddy herb and betel leaf to Thai basil, common mint and cilantro. Tossed into soup or wrapped around a spring roll, it’s like biting into an edible ecosystem.
Pho Nouveau, the two-month-old Vietnamese restaurant that took over Falcon Tavern’s old location on Idaho Street, is doing its best to deliver that ecosystem to Downtown Boise.
Its namesake noodle soup is a case in point. Pho (pronounced “fuh”) is often called Vietnam’s national dish and it’s a pleasant enough soup on its own, full of rice noodles and sliced meats afloat on a broth laced with star anise and ginger. But toss a fistful of rau thom into that steaming bowl and the scents of southeast Asia rise up like a mist off the Mekong River.
The rau thom at Pho Nouveau doesn’t hold the botanical diversity of some (and I wonder if its quality will waiver over winter), but the mix of mint, cilantro, Thai basil, green onion and bean sprouts is enough to give the restaurant’s beef or chicken pho ($8.50) the authentic scent of Viet terroir. If you crave more terroir, throw in as much lime juice, hot, hoisin and soy sauce as you like. The beauty of pho is its infinite customizability.
There are lots of other customizable dishes at Pho Nouveau.
The crispy spring rolls ($6) filled with ground pork, vegetables and cellophane noodles can be wrapped in lettuce leaves and herbs, then dipped in a savory sweet sauce. The Saigon crepe ($5.75), a kind of lacy, crisp omelet filled with chicken, shrimp, onion and bean sprouts, also can be wrapped and dipped. All are elevated by the inclusion of rau thom.
Another Vietnamese classic, this one by way of French occupation, is the Banh Mi, a crisp baguette filled with pickled carrots, daikon, onion, cucumber, cilantro and aioli. I tried the lemongrass chicken version ($6.50) and found it delicious, especially accompanied by some of the tastiest sweet potato fries I’ve had in a long time. (The Vietnamese like their sweet potatoes.) Too bad Banh Mi is only a lunchtime offering.
Several of the other aforementioned dishes are available on the dinner menu, but many evening meals rely less on fresh herbs. I found those dishes often lacking vibrancy, the taste I register as southeast Asian. The spicy beef with grilled shrimp ($12.95) and spicy scallops ($12.95) were both good, but not the emphatically fragrant departures from mainstream American Oriental that Vietnamese food can be.
One highlight on the dinner menu was the chicken curry ($9.95). It lacked the botany lesson, but was still a refreshing surprise. A lemongrass-, shallot- and carrot-infused coconut-milk curry contained chunks of chicken and sweet potato – and that potato was sweet, earthy and unctuous. I now can’t imagine curry without it. The dish also came with a baguette instead of rice and a dipping sauce for the chicken that seemed nothing more than a pile of salt, dried chilies and a wedge of lime. Squeeze that lime into the salt to make a slurry, though, and it becomes a perfectly bracing counterpoint to the richness of the curry itself.
Still, these are early days for Pho Nouveau. The service could be fine tuned, the lettuce and herbs more thoroughly dried, the sliced meats less thoroughly cooked and and the playlist of kitschy Asian pop broadened a bit.
Despite those few youthful missteps, I’ll be back – as long as the botany lessons keep coming.
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