Let me tell you a secret. My mother and I haven’t always had the warmest or closest relationship. In fact, we used to not interact with each other much, but that has been changing recently.
One of the ways in which our relationship has changed is that my mother has been coming to Silver Lake with increasing frequency the last couple of years. Now, she’ll tell you she’s running errands when she comes over, and it’s true I do take her shopping for Trader Joe’s mixed nuts and wine, but I also think she’s coming over to visit. A few weekends ago mom came over. She was out of wine.
Normally her visits only last about an hour. As soon as she arrives we’re out the door and on our way to restock her Sauternes, Port, and Riesling collection. This time she arrived at lunch time so I invited her to lunch before going shopping. I suggested we go to a local Guatemalan deli or the corner burrito stand, but she said that she ate that kind of food all the time and wondered if there wasn’t some other place we could go. After some quick thinking I decided to take her to a local pho restaurant.
The pho restaurant is long and narrow. It’s a low key place with modern/60′s style decor. As you walk in the tables are aligned in a row on the right side. When we arrived at the restaurant there were only a few people eating which was nice because it would give us chance to talk, but at the same time it was a bit worrying because we sometimes don’t have much to talk about.
After taking our seats I started explaining the different kinds of meats she could get with her pho. There’s chicken, meat balls, tripe, tendon, and rare beef of course. I also told her she could get pho dac biet – the works. Like son like mother…. she chose the pho dac biet. After ordering two pho dac biet we proceeded to chit chat and catch up on what had been happening in our lives. It was just like our talks during any previous visit.
After a few minutes the waiter arrived with our bowls and fixings. I then proceeded to explain how to squeeze lime juice and tear up basil into the soup. I told her she could add sauces too. She then picked up some Thai basil and brought it up to her nose and sniffed at the strange plant. And then something happened… I saw her eyes widen and mouth beam a huge smile as she inhaled the basil’s perfume. Then she asked, “WoW! Que es esto mijo?” (Wow! What’s this my son.) And as I named the herb she was only half listening. She was already busy smelling all of the other fixings… the kaffir lime, the culantro. She then poked at the pho with her chop sticks and investigated the meatballs and raw beef slices.
A switch has been flipped in mom’s head. She was experiencing a completely new food experience. She was curious. she was exploring. she was learning. And a switch was flipped in our relationship too. As we laughed and giggled over our steaming bowls of pho. We talked about the fatty gelatinous tendon and how it reminded us of other dishes like oxtail stew. We shared our food stories and talked about how we could use these newly found herbs too. No longer was that lunch a somewhat obligatory thing instead we were sharing a meal together as friends and foodies.
Recipes by Luis De Avila is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.luisdeavila.com.
