Phở Score and Seven Years Ago

DC’s Virginia suburbs purportedly proffer phở real Vietnamese food, but I have a personal embargo (embargphở?) on spending money in former Confederate states. (I also don’t sleep with Republicans, so as to neither aid nor comfort the enemy.) It is good phởrtune, then, that I need not travel a phởrtnight to procure passable phở.

Among Columbia Heights’ pupuserías, public housing, pricey penthouses, and Panda Express, Phở 14 is a landmark — but I’m not there. I’m a few blocks away at Phở Viet, a tidy English basement (n.b., what exactly is English about living underground?) on a sleepy, yet stabby-chic stretch of 14th St. NW that’s quickly becoming less ¿cuando? and more condo, skipping the Rent phase that usually comes between.

Even Washington’s hole-in-the-wall restaurants inexplicably trend toward immaculately clean, freshly tiled, and sparsely decorated — a Panera-laundromat-rustic aesthetic. Phở Viet is no exception, sitting on a block that captures the vague noir and menacing lushness of leafy uptown DC. Amidst a streetscape of modest craftsman rowhouses and tired art deco liquor stores, an uptown trolley could pass with Roger Rabbit in tow. A mugger could also pass with a tire iron in tow and crack your jaw — making slurpable phở entirely a propos.

The c.w. is that Phở 14 has better bánh mì and Phở Viet has better phở. Frankly, I like everything at both, and I can’t tell the difference. Both are great spots to enjoy a leisurely meal with friends, but go to Phở Viet to brood on the breathtaking rapidity of gentrification, the racial tension that hangs as thick in the air as Washington’s humidity, the perpetual question of to whom the federal city belongs. Or to grab a bite en route to Red Derby.

Phở Viet
3513 14th St. NW (corner Parkwood Pl.)
Washington, DC 20010
Phởne: (202) 629-2839
http://www.phovietdc.com
Metro: Columbia Heights (Green/Yellow)
Buses: 52, 53, 54

Rating: ****/*****
Price: $/$$$$