The Pho restaurant named Dong Thap in Seattle has posed a challenge for customers: eating a giant 6kg bowl of pho will be rewarded with US $ 100 (about VND 2.2 million). The Americans call this challenge the Superbowl version of Pho.
Female journalist Bethany Jean Clement of The Seattle Times went to Dong Thap restaurant with 3 friends: chef Miles James, famous baker chef Matt Tinder and graphic designer Chas Roberts. The four candidates led each other to conquer the noodle bowl of hell consisting of 2 liters of pho, over 1.8kg of noodles and 1.8 kg of meat. If winning each person will have 100USD to celebrate Tet, lose then give lucky money to the owner of 40USD per bowl.
The candidate group arrived at the restaurant at noon and had breakfast and coffee before. However, when sitting down at the table, no one could hide the craving, and mixed with a little worried when he smelled the aromatic pho from the two huge pot of broth in Dong Thap restaurant. Finally, when finished, Ms. Tran Khanh Vi, wife of boss Bui Bui just brought 4 "monsters" to the "knights" sitting there to solve.
90 minutes of competition started, 1 and a half hours for a bowl of pho sounds too much, quite easy to implement. But not at all. Each bowl of pho is put down, with meat is meat, noodles and too much broth quickly quench the mood of all 4 candidates. 2 liters of pho in 1 and a half hours, every minute, including the time to eat pho, eat meat, each person must slurp at least 33 grams of broth. When the calculation is complete, Matt Tinder rushes into combat.
Meanwhile, Miles James sprays all kinds of spices, soy sauce into the water to add flavor. Chas Roberts decided to resolve all the meat first. He prioritizes the difficulty first, then Pho and water. And Bethany aims to solve the pile of noodles first.
20 minutes later, the bowl of Tinder, who drank the water, was noticeably gone, while the other bowls of pho were still in a state of fullness. All 4 of them were sweating profusely, so much so that the owner Tran Khanh Vi had to ask if they needed help because she was also a nurse. Everyone started a "slow but steady" tactic, slowly working on it, wishing time would slow down.
"Until the time is up, we have reached the limit of human end. We just want to sit there and not leave," Bethany wrote in her review of hell noodle soup on The Seattle Times.
Unable to bear it any longer, all four candidates had to beg the owner to halve the amount of pho to win, which means cutting the prize in half. But do not wait until the end of time, the quartet simultaneously gave up.
Being "abused by the stomach" is so, but the love for the national national food of Vietnam among 4 people still cannot be moved. It feels like a pile of pho in them can survive until a few days later. Bethany decided to bring the rest of the pho home, which should not be said to be few, because the "little" here is extremely rich in pho!
Dong Thap Restaurant in Seattle is a newly opened restaurant, located in Chinatown. The restaurant owner, Nick Bui, and his wife Tran Khanh Vi, have a tradition of making 4 generations of pho in Vietnam. The restaurant serves pho, vermicelli and spring rolls, each written by the culinary correspondent Bethany Jean Clement in The Seattle Times.
