Oh? An Loi Has Different Pho? Let's Go.

An Loi's pho with kimchi

Variation is the spice of life -- just be clear about out how much spice you want.

Vietnamese soup makes for a great dinner -- either a casual dinner out or great get-well takeout for home.  The standard pho -- which is pronounced "fugh" despite the bad "fo" puns above -- is a beef stock served with several beef options and an array of Thai basil, sprouts and sliced hot peppers that you can use to personalize the dish.

An Loi and Pho Dat Thanh in Columbia both do a fine pho.  I can't claim they match the amazing Vietnamese food that you could get in Northern Virginia.  But I enjoy my basic bowl with thin-sliced brisket and eye-round steak (#P4), and you can't beat dinner entrees at $7.

Two soups -- one with fried chicken

With several weeks of colds this fall, we filled several prescriptions at An Loi, and we went beyond the generic drugs.  Pho with kim chi (#P11) came first.  That can't be traditional Vietnamese, but the flavors paired nicely.  The sour spice of Korean cabbage contrasted with the stock, but it didn't take over.

Then we left the pho page all together for other Vietnamese soups.  Bun bo hue (#H8) comes with vermicelli noodles -- thicker than the regular rice versions.  Spicy soup.  Nose-clearing, virus-killing spicy.  It was exactly what I needed.

Mrs. HowChow mixed up and ordered hu tieu hoac mi ga xoi mo (#H3) -- a soup flavored with minced pork and served with crisp fried chicken on the side.  Cool variation.  Not chicken as special as you can get.  But still proof that you should work around An Loi's menu as well.

Anything else you like at An Loi or Pho Dat Thanh?  Mrs. HowChow likes the lemon grass chicken with noodle (#B6), although the spiciness can vary day-to-day.  Thai and Vietnamese are both great cuisines, and we have good places.  I'm still looking for the great dishes though.  (Updated: I fixed both mis-spellings. I think.)

A New Picture Of An Loi Pho

Soups -- not pho -- from An Loi Pho

Maybe I'm just ridiculously shallow, but the new menu at An Loi Pho gave me a new picture of the Vietnamese restaurant in Columbia.

I don't truly know it's a new menu.  For the past few years, An Loi had been just for comfort food takeout.  I'd order pho or the lemongrass chicken on nights when we needed some easy and simple.  Most everything tasted the same.  Good, but nothing new and intriguing.

That's until we were flipping through pictures in the An Loi menu last weekend.  We had gone to fight our colds with bowls of soup, and the photos in the menu offered up variations to the northern Vietnamese soup that gives the place its name.

I went with a rice noodle soup heavy on seafood (H1), and Mrs. HowChow went with udon noodles in a broth with shrimp and lean sliced pork (H4).  They're both delicious, and they come with the plate of sprouts, lime, and green herbs that let you doctor your bowl your way -- along with a half dozen condiments like soy sauce, sriracha, and a spicy oil.

Papaya salad

Suddenly, I feel like there are all kinds of options here.  More choice than just which meat you put in pho.  The soups made us happy.  I liked the mix of fish balls, squid, shrimp and pork.  Mrs. HowChow slurped her udon noodles, although she isn't a huge fan of dealing with tail-on shrimp and big pieces of pork in the bowl.

But the soups weren't even our favorite part of the meal.  I took a flyer on papaya salad, and that's a must-eat.  Shredded papaya comes mixed with cellophane noodles, shimp, cilantro and other vegetables.  It's a crisp, light salad full of the salty-sweet-citrus flavors that make Vietnamese so delicious.  They're all set in almost a broth flavored with fish sauce.

Now, I want to go back for more An Loi variation.  Remember the salted plum soda and the "French" coffee with condensed milk.  I don't claim this is Vietnamese that should make people drive from the city, but it's a better local joint than I was giving it credit before.

Cold Drinks: Salted Plum Soda At An Loi

The lesson of salted plum soda is that you don't need to buy a Coke to stay cool this summer.

An Loi Pho in Columbia sells the salted plum soda, and it was one of our first HowChow finds.  Mrs. HowChow ordered one up, and we found that they're light and sweet, wonderful with the grilled meats and noodles dishes that make An Loi one of our places for summer dinner.

In the middle of the day, the sodas are refreshing as well.  They're sweet, sour and salty all at once.  It makes sense.  The plums are preserved, so they muddle salt out into the drink.  That swirls with a touch of sugar and the soda water that they pour over top.

You get a thicker, saltier flavor at the bottom, so you should stir it up.  This is a handmade drink -- something way more genuine than even the Coke Zero that I love.  The takeout version goes great with a summer roll if you want a snack.  That's noodles with a shrimp, a slice of pork and some vegetables wrapped in rice paper.  Light, cool food for our crushing heat.

It's Cold Drink Week at HowChow.  Stay cool without feeding a bill into a soda machine.  Go check out the handmade drinks that will keep you just as cool.

Link: An Loi On The Baltimore Snacker

The city folks keep coming to Columbia for culture -- at least a play and a Vietnamese dinner for the Baltimore Snacker.

The Snacker posted about An Loi where he and friends ate pho, pork with vermicelli and salty lemon soda.     An interesting find: He discovered that An Loi makes its own fish sauce.

I have written before about An Loi, which is on Snowden River Parkway.  The pho makes wonderful takeout because they package the broth, noodles, and vegetables separately.  When you get home, you assemble it as fresh as you would have it in the store.  And the salted plum and lemon sodas were one of my original finds for HowChow.  I recommend those and the Vietnamese coffee.

Stay Warm: Hot Soup, Hot Chocolate, Hot Pot

It's too cold this winter, so you need to warm yourself with food.  A cozy kitchen is a wonderful place to escape -- for example with the water dumplings from Andrea Nguyen's Asian Dumplings cookbook.  But Howard County has a bunch of nice places to warm you up as well with hot soup, hot chocolate and more.  My two inspirations:

• If you want a daytime snack, check out the hot chocolate at Touche Touchet Bakery in Columbia.  It's a mix, but a creamy thick mix.  The hot chocolate and maybe a cupcake make for a perfect escape from winter.
• If you want a meal, check out the soup at An Loi Pho in Columbia.  Pho is actually a breakfast food in Vietnam, although we tend to eat it as a winter speciality.  Actually, Mrs. HowChow likes the lemongrass chicken noodle dish.  I tend to order a large pho with brisket and maybe another meat.  The real attraction is the enormous bowl of broth filled with noodles and doctored with bean sprouts, Thai basil, hot sauce and lime.   It's an inexpensive meal, and I leave warm, stuffed but not overly full.  You can even get a second round of heat from the sweet "French" coffee.
• If you want a new adventure, check out the tea tree mushroom casserole at Hunan Taste.  This is a new restaurant in the H Mart shopping center in Catonsville.  Delicious Chinese food cooked in an authentic Hunan style.  The dish comes out as thin, chewy mushrooms, flavored with pork, and served in a hot broth.  I'll write more about Hunan Taste, but it will warm you up in many ways.

What else do you eat when you want something warm?  The bread at Maiwand Kabob?  Is there somewhere cozy that you like to curl up to get out of the cold?

Salted Plum and Salted Lemon Sodas at An Loi Pho

An Loi Pho is a small restaurant with a basic menu, which makes it even more impressive that the array inspires me to return again and again.

Salted sodas sound like some travel writer's example of a "local" taste that disagrees with an American palette. But the salted plum and salted lemon sodas at An Loi are sweet with a perfectly-honed flavor of preserved fruit. They're light. They're unusual. And they're wonderful with the grilled meats and noodles dishs that make An Loi a great stop for a summer dinner.

If you are converted, you can buy preserved plums in the refrigerated section of the H Mart in Catonsville. I have played with recreating the sodas, but I still haven't gotten the right sweetness. I'll go back for more research.

Click here for a longer review of An Loi or here for a working list of the best restaurants in Howard County. In the winter (or anytime if you love coffee), check out An Loi's Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk.

An Loi Pho -- a longer review
7104 Minstrel Way
Columbia, MD 21045
410-381-3188

NEAR: Off Snowden River Pwky north of Broken Land and south of the Home Depot. Look for the traffic light with a gas station and a KFC. An Loi is behind the gas station in a shopping center with a Pizza Hut Express and a nail salon.

An Loi Pho: Vietnamese in Columbia

Drive past the KFC and the Pizza Hut and go warm yourself with soup and a twist on lemonade.

It's pho. It's bun. It's a drink made with salted plums. An Loi Pho serves up friendly, accessible food with enough authenticity to make the trip worthwhile.

Outside, it is a shopping center anonymous even for the suburbs, and inside, the decor isn't much more complex. Plastic tables. Minimal artwork. Silverware and condiments laid in on every table. The menu is simple and affordable, more of a soup and grill joint than a full display of Vietnamese cuisine with its sauteed vegetables and clay pot cooking. Most dishes are $6-$10, and most everything is a variation on noodles, meat and a sauce or soup. It's a fine selection if you know Vietnamese food, and it's easy to navigate if you want to figure it out.

The basic menu sections:

• Pho: a beef soup with noodles and a meat of your choice. Eye round, brisket and flank are all easy to recognize. Tendon and tripe may be delicious to you, but they were easy for me to avoid. They're served with a plate of bail leaves, sprouts and a lime wedge. Tear up the basil, squeeze the lime and add the spouts to your taste, along with any of the spicy condiments on the table. A bowl is a meal. A large bowl is gorging, but I don't leave overly full.
  
• Bun: white, soft noodles. They're in the pho, but if you order bun, you get a bowl of noodles with the meat of your choice and a sauce to pour overtop. The sauce coats everything, and the flavors are more grilled and lemongrass.
  
• Everything Else: an array of grilled meats served with rice and variations of soup and noodles. On my last visit, the Vietnamese families seemed to be eating grilled pork and chicken.

Start off with a summer roll or beef wraped in grape leaves. They're both delicious. I prefer the shrimp rolls, which are served cool not fried and dipped in a peanut sauce.

And order the "salted plum soda." Mrs. ChowHow stepped up and discovered this delicious offering. It's a hand-made drink, not a bottled soda. Club soda mixed with a little sugar and a few salted plums at the bottom. Imagine a lemonade with a touch of salt instead of sour. Refreshing and delicious. Exotic, but really not that strange.

Any An Loi meal should end with the "French coffee" that I wrote about earlier.  If you want a broader Vietnamese menu, check out Pho Dat Trahn, which is just a few shopping centers north on Snowden River.

An Loi Pho

7104 Minstrel Way

Columbia, MD 21045

410-381-3188

NEAR: On Snowden River Pkwy north of Broken Land and south of the Home Depot. Minstrel Way has a gas station and a KFC at its intersection with Snowden, and An Loi is in the shopping center behind the gas station. Look for the red neon signs.

HocoLoco Girl on Vietnamese -- a listing of places

Delicious: Vietnamese Coffee at An Loi Pho

Go to An Loi Pho off Snowden River Pkwy for a meal and then "French coffee."

You get a coffee cup with a metal strainer on top. The boiling water has just been poured inside, and you sit watching as it drips through the coffee grounds and into your cup. It's a nice rest, a moment to talk. Then, you pull off the strainer to reveal a surprisingly thick, sweet drink.

Condensed milk. Probably a Big Mac's calories mixed with the coffee th
at just brewed into your cup. The coffee is strong, sweet and condensed milk tastes different than anything in the latte, steamed milk family. You also get a tea pot of hot water to thin out the coffee if you want. I added a dash, but I don't suggest much. Enjoy the difference. I don't know if the French drink this way, but it tastes and looks like the coffee in Hanoi.

An Loi's meals are worth a post on their own. Simple decor, but delicious food. Great if you already have a taste for Vietnamese food. If you don't, you can't go wrong ordering a summer roll, a bowl of pho (soup) with the meat of your choice, and bun (vermicelli) with the meat of your choice.

If you want cool instead of warm, try An Loi's salted lemon and salted plum sodas.

An Loi Pho -- a longer review
7104 Minstrel Way
Columbia, MD 21045
410-381-3188

NEAR: Off Snowden River Pwky north of Broken Land and south of the Home Depot. Look for the traffic light with a gas station and a KFC. An Loi is behind the gas station in a shopping center with a Pizza Hut Express and a nail salon.


HocoLoco Girl on Vietnamese -- a listing of places