Phở Chua: Sour Pho Noodles from the North

Phở chua, sour pho, is a cool noodle dish from northern Vietnam, eaten in summer and in winter. It used to be cooked only for feasts; now people eat it as an everyday meal. What makes it good is the chewiness of the noodles and the toppings: pork liver, bacon, duck and sausage. It usually comes with herbs and a sour sauce.

The six things a good phở chua needs

There are many ways to make phở chua, but a good one always has six main components:

• Noodles. These are rice noodles made by hand. For the best noodles, the rice to use is a variety called “pink rice”, which is mostly grown in the North West area.
• Sour sauce. This is taken from the jar the pickles were made in.
• Pickles.
• Soya sauce.
• Peanuts.
• A northern-style sauce.

The hardest part: the soya sauce

Making the soya sauce is the most difficult part of the dish. To make a tasty one, you collect soya beans and mash them in three months, and sometimes the whole batch spoils because the weather and temperature weren’t right. If you want to make phở chua at home, buy a ready-made soya sauce instead.

Once the soya sauce goes in, the dish takes on a yellow-brown colour, like honey. It tastes even better with the chilli sauce people make in the north.

When it’s eaten

Phở chua isn’t fancy or refined, but it carries a strong flavour of northern culture. Local people usually cook it for holidays and festivals, so those are good days to look for it.

The first time I ate phở chua, I didn’t think it was very good. The second time, I couldn’t stop at two plates.

Trying it in Ho Chi Minh City

If you can’t get to the North West area to try it, there was a restaurant on Nguyễn Thiện Thuật Street in Ho Chi Minh City serving phở chua when this was written.