How to eat pho, broth first.

Seven steps

How to eat a bowl of pho.

1. Smell it, then sip the brothThe broth is the soul of pho. Before anything goes in, breathe it in and take a spoonful on its own — that is the cook’s work, unedited.
2. Eat the rare beef earlyIf you ordered tái, the thin slices arrive pink and keep cooking in the hot broth. Push them under and eat them first if you like them tender.
3. Tear in a few herbsPick a few Thai basil and culantro leaves, tear them with your fingers and drop them in. Add more as you go so they stay fresh, rather than dumping the whole plate at once.
4. Sprouts, lime, chiliBean sprouts add crunch raw, or soften if you push them all in. A squeeze of lime lifts a broth that tastes flat or salty. A slice or two of chili in the broth adds heat that grows.
5. Sauces on the sideSqueeze a little hoisin and chili sauce into the small dish and dip pieces of meat into it. Stir them into the bowl only if you are sure — it changes the whole broth.
6. Chopsticks and spoon togetherChopsticks in one hand, spoon in the other. Lift noodles with the chopsticks, rest them in the spoon with some broth, and slurp. Slurping is normal at a pho shop.
7. Finish the broth your waySpoon up as much broth as you like. If you loved it, that empty bowl is the best review the kitchen gets.

Cheat sheet

What the words on a pho menu mean.

Menus outside Vietnam often number their bowls and spell the words without accents (tai, chin, nam, gau). Cuts vary a little from shop to shop, so if you want something specific, ask.

Order this

Your first three bowls.

• Bowl one: phở tái. Rare steak only. It teaches you the broth without distractions.
• Bowl two: tái chín. Rare steak and well-done brisket, so you taste how each cut changes the bowl.
• Bowl three: đặc biệt. The house special with tendon, tripe and meatballs. If you love it, you have become a regular.
• Not into beef? Phở gà, the chicken version, is a gentler bowl and just as traditional.

At the table

Pho manners, in short.

• Taste before you season. It is the one rule pho cooks mention most.
• Herbs a few at a time. Torn by hand, added as you eat, so the last spoonful is as fresh as the first.
• Sauces are yours to use. They are on the table for a reason; a dipping dish just keeps your options open.
• Slurp. It cools the noodles and nobody at a pho shop minds.
• Lift, don’t chop. Let long noodles hang from the chopsticks into the spoon instead of biting them short over the bowl.

Keep it

Snap the bowl before the herbs go in.

The prettiest moment is the first one: clear broth, pink beef, the herb plate untouched. Take one photo then. PlateDiary cuts the bowl, the herb plate and that iced coffee into separate saves on your phone, in about a second, and files them under the place and the time. Name it the way you ordered it — “tái chín, extra lime” — and your past names come back as one-tap chips next time.

After a few visits the place page shows your usual there, and searching “pho” lists every shop you have had it, from Little Saigon to Melbourne. Give each bowl stars with a rating scale you trust, and the great-broth shops rise to the top on their own.