Pho Bac Ky's $4.99 bowl of pho is probably not the cheapest meal you could have in Tustin, but it sure seems like it. The stenciled sign on the window that says “$4.99 + tax for Pho (Rare Steak or Brisket) or Rice with BBQ Chicken” has been there forever. A few years ago, the going rate was actually a dollar less. But even at $4.99, it's such a bargain that you'd have to troll the back alleys of Little Saigon to find a better one. And it's not some sort of Happy Hour deal, either. The price is offered for dinner on weekdays (3 p.m.-9 p.m.) and all day on the weekends, which is when you want to eat it anyway.
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The pho is everything you need and expect of a 5-dollar bowl of noodles in soup. The anise-scented broth scalds, there's enough meat to drip Sriracha on, and after you finish slurping the miles and miles of noodles, you realize how much more satisfying it is to other things you can eat for $5. Subway's footlongs? Psh!
When you look around, you notice that that you're not the only soul who thinks so. Korean families, Vietnamese familes, Mexican families, every body is eating the same meal, which goes to prove that if the comforts of pho is becoming more universally known, cheap pho is even more so.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.