Man, there used to be an incredible pho shop where I used to live (Irving, Tx) back in the 1980s. Best I’ve ever had- flavorful, aromatic…just perfection. Unfortunately, they only lasted a few months. The food wasn’t the problem, though.
The owner/operator was a recent immigrant from Vietnam, and his English wasn’t good. Fortunately, he had family who had been here for a decade+ to help him get his place open, with one nephew in particular taking the lead. Thus the seeds of doom were sown.
That nephew was, in a word, “flamboyant”. As in Nathan Lane in La Cage Au Folles flamboyant. And the visual aesthetics and piped in music were all his choices. So you went in for incredible pho, you got to sit in a restaurant with bright pink textured walks and a dance club mix of music at 120bpm.
While that place would probably be celebrated today, back then, Irving was still the most segregated city in the entire Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, with a highly visible and active KKK presence. He didn’t stand a chance.
I dined there 3-4 times, happily, but one day I went there, and there wasn’t there anymore.
(OTOH, the next tenant was a GENIUS baker/caterer who we frequented until he moved his operations into a bigger suite on the other side of the county.)
