When the weather turns a shade too chilly, there’s really no better recipe to warm you up than a rich, bold bowl of piping hot pho.
This Vietnamese soup dish traditionally consists of crystal-clear broth, rice noodles, herbs aplenty, and succulent meat - usually either chicken or beef.
“Rice noodles and other spices used in making the broth undoubtedly have a connection with Chinese people in the north,” Alex Tran, a Vietnamese chef and food writer, previously told the BBC of the dish’s origins.
“However, beef is not the daily meat of the Vietnamese as we use buffaloes for farming. Only under the French colonial regime did the consumption of beef start to appear and bloom.”
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A street food favourite, pho is easy enough to make at home, but nothing beats a tried-and-tested recipe from a family-run restaurant, right?
If you’re a pho shop regular, then you may have noticed your local has a seemingly-random collection of numbers in the title.
For example, there’s PHO 23 in Manchester, Hanoi Pho 21 in central London, and Pho 79, located inside Glasgow's St Enoch Centre.
Across the pond is exactly the same: with Pho 88, Pho 813 Orlando, and Pho Que 91 all residing within Florida, and The Pho 2 in New York City, among other establishments.
In fact, according to some American diners interviewed by FoodBeast.com, they would only go to a pho restaurant if it had a number its name.
“If it has a number I’m going to it,” said one diner. “So many of these restaurants with weird names like ‘Phoshizzle’ and ‘Pho King’. I’m trying to stay away from those.”
The common assumption when it comes to numbers like 96, 82, or even 25, is that the restaurant is just signalling the year which it opened it.
However, some restaurateurs pick numbers based on the year they or their family arrived in the United States, according to 303 Magazine.
But that’s not the case for every noodle house, according to Pho 96’s owner, Lam.
They told the outlet that it’s easier for hungry audiences to remember a simple numbered designation, rather than a Vietnamese title.
Others apparently select lucky numbers, such as the casual 99999 Pho in California.
In numerology, the number nine signifies wealth, kindness, empathy, and prosperity.
When asked why he called his restaurant 99999, owner Tom Huynh told FoodBeast’s Reach Guinto: “This is one of the lucky numbers for us. My wife, she loves the number nine.
Other lucky Vietnamese numbers include ‘6’ and ‘8’, while the number ‘4’ is often avoided, as well as ‘49’ and ‘53’. The latter are considered ‘calamitous’ numbers, as per Science Direct.
Pho restaurants can also use numbers in their name to honour a certain location.
As outlined by FoodBeast, Pho Thin 13 Lo Duc is named after a restaurant address in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam.
Over on Reddit, another food fan has explained that numbers may signify an important date in the restaurant owners’ lives.
“To mark a date in Vietnamese history, or the owners' personal life (such as immigrating). I'm guessing the 67 stands for 1967, which may have been when the owner fled Vietnam during the war, or perhaps when they were born in a Thai refugee camp,” they said.
“Sometimes on the menu there will be an explanation. You might also want to ask the proprietor.”
So next time you’re craving some pho, maybe take a second to question the owner on the origins of their noodle house’s name. It may take you by surprise.
Ella Scott