Google Doodle for celebrating Phở

by noshadalileghari · Published December 12, 2021 · Updated December 12, 2021

Google Doodle for celebrating Phở

On December 12, 2021, a Google animated Doodle honours the Vietnamese national soup meal Ph or pho, a popular dish served in homes, street stalls, and restaurants around the country.

Ph is a Vietnamese soup made with broth, rice noodles (bánh ph), herbs, and meat (typically beef) (ph b), but occasionally chicken (ph gà).

Pho originated in northern Vietnam in the mid-twentieth century and was popularised worldwide by evacuees following the Vietnam War. Because the origins of pho aren’t extensively documented, there’s debate about the cultural elements that influenced its spread in Vietnam, as well as the name’s etymology. The pho styles of Hanoi (northern) and Saigon (southern) differ in noodle width, broth sweetness, and herb selection.

The thorough cooking procedure used to provide multi-layered tastes and a clear broth distinguishes ph. The broth serves as the foundation for smells and tastes for each sense of taste, thanks to spices like toasted ginger, fennel seed, star anise, and cinnamon in the stewed stock.

While its exact roots are unknown, most historians believe ph was born between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century in northern Vietnam’s Nam Dinh area. Some believe “ph” is derived from the term “phn,” which refers to a rice noodle dish.

People began to use beef consommé to make an early version of ph—a simple but well-known noodle soup called xao trau, which consisted of buffalo meat boiled in broth and rice vermicelli.

Ph is traditionally a breakfast dish offered in street food carts, but it is now consumed as a regular comfort food. Ph is now consumed in innumerable forms around the world, including ph trn (dry ph), ph gà (chicken ph), ph cun (ph rolls), and many others.

Everyone can agree that the noodle dish is an important part of Vietnamese culture. Despite recent events easing back the food markets, people are optimistic about their return to a place where ph may once again be enjoyed as a shared, gastronomic experience in daily life.

In 2007, the word “pho” was added to the Oxford Shorter Dictionary. Pho is ranked number 28 on CNN Go’s list of the “World’s 50 Most Delicious Foods” from 2011. On April 3, 2016, the Vietnamese Embassy in Mexico observed Pho Day, with Osaka Prefecture following suit the next day. Other Southeast Asian cuisines, such as Lao and Hmong cooking, have adopted pho. In Australia, it’s sometimes written as “Phô” on menus.

Pho restaurants have opened in a variety of Asian regions and Little Saigons, such as Paris and major cities in the United States, Canada, and Australia. In 1980, the first of several pho restaurants appeared in Orange County, California’s Little Saigon.