The Thousands

One-upmanship is rife amongst diners: ‘Oh yeah?! You want the BEST pad thai? I KNOW the BEST in MELBOURNE, BY FAR! You don’t.’ I could never complete: for the first half of this year I liberally imparted my knowledge of a secret place called St Jerome’s: ‘They practically didn’t want me to know it’s there!’

But revenge is now mine as I cast this nefarious pall of universal upmanship across you all: Pho Tam. Pho Tam? Wasn’t he that guy in grade nine we dared to drink magnesium?, I hear you all say. No. Footscray’s Pho Tam is the best Vietnamese restaurant in Australia. And Epicure doesn’t even know it exists (queue Dr Evil laugh).

Like John McCain I also lived in Vietnam for a bit, and so I am an expert on their food. I am, you could say, a whitey who was ‘born with a pair of chopsticks in his hands’ (it was a painful birth). And so, on this haughty authority, I say Pho Tam is the real deal. The enormously over-hyped Thien An near the station does the same noodle soups, but with those guys it’s like watching a old peoples’ home’s version of Dunst’s Bring It On: it’s watery and unsatisfying.

At Pho Tam go for the duck soup, and the central Vietnamese hot noodle soup (bun rieu). And something called bun bo luc lac. Finish with a yummy avocado smoothie. And, if you are a whitey, the only other whitey you will see there will be me, resplendent in my upmanship.