From The New Orleans Menu Daily By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published June 6, 2007 #39 Pho Tau Bay 1$ Gretna: 113-C West Bank Expy. 368-9846 Lunch and dinner Tues.-Sat. MC V Vietnamese The most celebrated of the local specialists in brothy, noodle-filled whole-meal Vietnamese soups, Pho Tau Bay is always busy. Its food and almost laughably low prices cause one to overlook its location in a grubby-looking strip mall full of minimalist Vietnamese businesses. Inside is a surprise. The crowd will likely be more Western than Asian. And there will be a crowd, enough that you might have to wait for a table. The decor is spartan, although nicer since the place was refurbished following the storm. Rows of long, granite-topped communal tables are set with lazy susans from which you pick your spoons, condiments, napkins, and chopsticks. The menu is to the point. They have pho in several configurations. You choose a broth of either beef or chicken, then what you want in it. Sliced beef comes in two degrees of doneness, as well as in meatballs, beef tripe, and beef tendon (which is exactly what it sounds like, and makes for added gelatin in the soup). They also make a shrimp version. What comes to the table is a bowl (large or small; the small is pretty big) of broth with the noodles and beef already swimming. On the side is a platter of fresh herbs--basil, mostly, but lettuce and cilantro and hot peppers, plus wedges of lime. There is no wrong way to assemble all this; just play around with it, adding a little of this or that at a time until you like the taste. This is very simple food. And while it might not seem the right thing to eat on a hot day, its lightness is refreshing. You eat the noodles with the chopsticks and the broth with the spoons. The menu starts with spring rolls of many varieties, both fried and not (I prefer the latter, with their stretchy skins and noodle-and-herb fillings). It continues past the pho to an assortment of bun dishes--piles of noodles at warm room temperature, surmounted with grilled meats, tofu, or even spring rolls. I like these even better than I like the pho; it's the same idea, really, but without the broth. You juice up the dry noodles with nuoc mam (the Southeast Asian fish sauce, the great-grandfather of Worcestershire), Sriracha (a ketchup-consistency hot red pepepr sauce), and herbs. A variation on this idea involves flat patties of fried noodles with similar toppings. The final specialty is what has become known locally as Vietnamese poor boys. That's about what they are: French bread filled with the meats and a very exotic assortment of dressings (cucumbers, carrots, herbs, etc.) These are delicious, and like everything else on the menu here, improbably cheap. The name Pho Tau Bay (which sounds something like "foota boy" when they say it) means "airplane soup," a legacy of the war. It started in Vietnam before it fell, and moved here in the 1980s. Before the hurricane, the franchise extended to three locations, but the ones in Metairie and Mid-City were so badly damaged that they were left behind. The original West Bank Pho Tau Bay was rumored also to be closed for good--the family relocated fo awhile to Cleveland--but came back quickly enough, to the pleasure if its many regulars. This was a restaurant in the 2007 Top Sixty Ethnic Restaurant Countdown. To view the entire list, click here. Click here for an index of all restaurant reviews. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com.