Eye of round

Greetings from New York City, where I'm currently in the process of eating my way through Manhattan. My general strategy is to work down all the avenues, starting with the odd numbered ones. I might move onto the cross-streets after. The good thing is that all the avenues lead down towards Chinatown. And so, it was in the mood for a bowl of Vietnamese soup noodles that I ventured down from Yorkville some 90-odd blocks down 3rd Avenue towards Canal Street. Third Avenue is nowhere near as cool as 1st Avenue, which takes you down urbanite Yorkville through the beautiful facade of the Bellevue Medical Center and the UN, and has just the right concentration of Japanese restaurants. Third takes you down the somewhat bland edges of downtown Manhattan and is mostly unexciting until it turns into Bowery, which is packed with cool restaurant kitchen outfitters strewn with new and refurbished ranges, fridges, freezers, mixers, display cabinets... of course, this isn't much use to anyone who doesn't own a restaurant, but it's fascinating to look at anyway. Below that is a whole bunch of lighting stores, too.

Anyway, after a brisk 90 minute walk I decided I would drop into the first Vietnamese restaurant I spotted, but in fact, I ended up going to the third. And a good call it was, too, because this was quite possible the oddest place I could ever have picked. Pho Banc is a hole-in-the-wall canteen on 3 Pike Street. I wasn't entirely clear whether I should try speaking in Cantonese, given that my Vietnamese isn't so good, but I opted for English instead. This, of course, was not such a great idea, as I later realized that all the signs were in Chinese, and probably contributed to my generally being looked at with disdain. In any case, from what I gather, the restaurant's menu is more or less limited to 'any part of cow you want' in soup noodles. And trust me, I mean any part of cow - even parts of cow you might never have known existed. I refer you, for example, to my chosen dish: 'Six differences type of beef [sic] with soup noodle (brisket, eye of round well cooked, tendon, omosa [I forget what the other two types were, if they were actually written on the menu...]'. 'Tendon'? 'Eye of round'? 'Omosa'? Well, curiosity got the better of me... I took 'eye of round well cooked' to imply that this was the whimpish version and, not to be taken for a mere tourist, opted instead for the choice of 'eye of round' that wasn't well cooked. "No! Don't do it!" I hear you say, but it was too late... the dour waitress gave me this suppressed look of surprise, hiding what I could feel was the evil laughter happening inside her head: "Bwah, ha, ha, you fool! You've asked for it now!" But she managed to limit herself to: "OK", walking off to the ksshh, ksshh, ksshh, ksshh sound of her dragging slippers. Anyway, five minutes later, the below was slid onto my table, and let me tell you now that it was delicious. The soup in particular was really tasty - those extra parts of cow certainly add extra flavour...

I take it that 'eye of round' doesn't have a literal meaning, as despite my anticipation of an Indiana Jones moment, I didn't spot any eye in my soup. On further research, however, 'omosa' appears to have been a typo, as according to dictionary.com the correct spelling is 'omasa', referring to "The third division of the stomach of a ruminant animal, located between the abomasum and the reticulum. Also called manyplies." 'Manyplies' is, of course, a much more useful and descriptive term...... oh, and don't let me forget the ice coffee, which is really nice, although you have to be patient for it to drip down.

So there you go, 'any part of cow' in soup noodles on 3 Pike Street. Go for it. It rocks.

Ice coffee

Eye of round in soup noodle