A bunch of us get together monthly to meet up over dinner. An "executive committee" came into being to consider possible locations and come to a decision and then announce the location to the rest of the group.
Over the years it's been pretty much a meat&potatos crowd. Steak houses, neighborhood Italian places, "Chinese" buffet and the like. The most exotic we ever went to was Golden Corral - they have that Chocolate Wonderfall thing that everybody talked about but refused to try.
So I have been trying to get the executive committee interested in broadening the horizon, so to speak. One of the other members of the committee has been dragged, several times, by his female shooting buddy, to slurp pho. He's still not gotten beyond the round steak or the meatballs, but likes the idea of seeing how many of the rest of the group will show up when we announce that soup will be on for our next meeting. As such, I have been instructed to go check out every pho house in town.
Tonight the task was completed. I even went to the tiny shacks where if seven people show up at the same time someone is going to have to wait for a space to sit at. Let me tell you, there
are differences in broth and noodles and bean sprouts even before you start putting meat or chicken or fish in the soup. And every one of the places (except one - they claimed to have none and to have never stocked it) has their own version of
nuc mam - some commercial but an awful lot of them home-made.
Even though I have a strong bias in favor of one place*, I have submitted what I think is a fair review of each place, with an accompaning highly biased recommendation for or against. I even included the availability (or not) of non-soup choices should someone feel they want "real food" instead. I made a special comment about each place for our Type 2 diabetic who goes out of control just looking at a slice of bread (and steadfaastly refuses to see a doctor).
Apparently I failed to adequately discuss the various pepper concoctions and even if I had I would have failed to compare them to Texas Pete and Tobasco (the latter for those who want to go on the wlld side).
I have less than a week to go back to all 13 places and do a review of the peppers/hot sauces. That's pho for lunch and dinner every day - on a regieme of 160 mg lasix twice a day! I can handle timing the morning dose so I can go for lunch, but putting my evening dose off till after even an early dinner will mean I'm up till the early hours before even daring to go to bed.
FML.
Pray for me.
stay safe.
