Pho Cali House of Noodles

Pho Cali is one of my favorite places to eat in Raleigh. Here it is.

HA. It is the holiest of holes in the wall, and it is perfect. When I worked in the San Fernando Valley, every Friday practically everyone from my office would go over to this little Vietnamese area and eat pho at a place exactly like this. The service was terrible, the decor like a high school cafeteria, our food never came out at the same time, and it was glorious. I was very, very excited to find that Raleigh had a Los Angeles-style pho house.

At Pho Cali, the bathrooms are horrifying and there's a huge TV blaring Vietnamese variety shows. They used to have a bunch of people smoking in there all the time, too, but that's stopped since North Carolina finally banned smoking in restaurants a couple of years ago. The food, though, is awesome. I love to go there for lunch especially, because it's just a couple of miles from my office.

Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup made with beef broth, so I can't eat it anymore. Now I order rice paper rolls and a big bowl of rice vermicelli with tofu and vegetables. It is so, so good. Here are pictures, including one of the condiment tray with the pepper shaker clearly labeled "salt."