Build it, and they will come. That's the advice we'd like to give to The Signature, the new Vietnamese restaurant that replaced Moxie in Lower Queen Anne.
Build it, and they will come. That's the advice we'd like to give to The Signature, the new Vietnamese restaurant that replaced Moxie in Lower Queen Anne.
Over the weekend we walked into the cash-only Than Bros. pho restaurant on Broadway, ordered a small bowl, and were charged $5.42, a price increase as yet unreflected on their online menu. We don't remember the specific passage in Revelations where the high price of pho is called out, but we're sure it's there. A friend of ours was just reminiscing about the days of the $3.87 small bowl with tears in his eyes. At these prices, we're likely to start expecting broth instead of that watery brownish stuff we use as a base for the plum sauce. Tomorrow night we're going to hear Paul Krugman speak at Town Hall on "The Return of Depression Economics"--we'll ask what pho used to cost in '33 and report back.
Well, sorta. Tuesday night, Seattlest hit West Seattle's Than Brothers (our favorite of all the branches, if only for the close-to-home location) to soothe our cold-ravaged sore throat with some tasty noodle soup. As usual, the service was insta-quick. The broth was a little bland, though we were veering toward that can't-taste-anything phase, so maybe it was us. (Did the small bowl recently become smaller? We got to the bottom and had room for more, which has never happened.) The cream puff was delicious. The cockroach crawling around on the checkout counter beside the tip tray? Not as good.
Just one week left for the Jamba Juice location on Queen Anne. We loved them when we first learned about them, but it seems like a long time since we've partaken in their protein powders and Peach Pleasures.
Seattlest has been obsessed with soups lately (it's not quite cold enough for stew). Today we tucked into Than Bros. chicken pho (small, $4.75). Tuesday it was Von's Three Meat Soup (a hearty, verging-on-stew bowlful, $6.95).
You may be under the impression that Seattle's numerous Than Brothers locations are equal to each other, each serving delicious pho in similarly disheveled and and unappealing dining rooms. We’re here to tell you that you are wrong. Over the past year, Seattlest David and Rachael have exhaustively toured Seattle's five Than Brothers to give you the best, the worst, and most importantly, the goldfish-iest of Seattle’s most ubiquitous of pho restaurants. Today we’ll be providing a brief overview of the distinctive features of each Seattle location. Friday we’ll be back with the first annual 2008 Seattlest Than Brothers PhO-dyssey awards!
While Seattlest's Katelyn has a healthy obsession for the perfect sandwich, we have similar devotion to finding the most delicious fall soup. In fact, the one saving grace of the imminent fall and rainy days is that it is soup weather. When it starts to rain in Seattle, our thoughts turn to soups of all kinds--pho, creamy butternut squash, Cafe Presse's soup of the moment, anything and everything on Hopvine's soup list, and the old delicious standard: a bowl of tomato soup and grilled cheese. We can't wait for October, when the already-mentioned beloved nectar that is Hopvine's home-made soups becomes available in the Southwest Pumpkin variety...a soup which we may be guilty of having dreamt of.