Pho Real (Lemon Grove)

Recently, before the warm up I was in Lemon Grove and decided to get some pho. I saw the sign for this shop and decided to stop by. Pho Real…….

Okay….very “punny”, eh? It was just after 9am; so Negro Durazo next door, which Cathy has posted on several times wasn’t open yet.

The interior is spacious, fairly modern. The menu board was filled with boba type drinks. I was the only customer in the place.

I decided to order “Special” Combo Pho, medium size…..of course there’s no “small”, only medium and large bowls ($15.50) . And since I was hungry I also got the Garlic Butter Wings ($11.75).

I quickly started noticing some of my pet peeves when the basil and sprouts arrived.

You see why, right?

At least it wasn’t overly discolored…….

And it got even more “interesting” when my bowl arrived.

You can quickly see how defatted and thin, the rather cloudy broth is.

It also had that “San Diego sweetish” and very salty flavor I’m not fond of, that is present in many versions of pho here. Very little beefiness….basically what I call the “wave broth”…you know, it’s like they waved a beef bone over the soup to impart flavor.

And when I “dug up” the noodles…..with all the stereotypes in play……you know what I’d find, right?

Yes, the banh pho was in a huge clump at the bottom of the bowl. Well, at least the noodles weren’t mushy, nor were they cold.

So perhaps things were slightly looking up?

The flank and brisket were really chewy and strangely, also lacked beefiness. The tripe though, was nice and crunchy and the one small piece of tendon quite soft and buttery.

You know, I’ve done over 150 posts on pho over the years and this is probably the most cliched, stereotypical bowl of San Diego Pho I’ve had! Or perhaps I’m just getting too picky?

I was nearly done with my pho when the wings arrived.

Look at that giant drumette. Like the pho, I thought this was rather mediocre. The batter was mushy and lacked crispness or crunchy texture. The sauce was a bit too sweet for my taste.

Worse of all….ready for this one? Most of the meat had that blackness that I find annoying.

Usually, I prefer the “flats” to the drumettes, but in this case the meat of the wings were really chewy, like jerky. Take a look at the flat below…..

And what was that round piece of chicken? Anatomically, what part of the chicken wing is that?

This meal had me wondering if I’d been pranked, as it seemed that all those things that I find annoying about pho were present here? Was this ~~pho real~~ for real? Perhaps this might be the one time that I find a “punny” name of a pho restaurant to be totally appropriate! Of course, I’d add a question mark at the end of the name.