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<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> My sides start appearing. A plate of shrimp crackers, all powdery pink and blue and orange and looking more like pieces of some bizarre children's toy than food. Next, the summer rolls -- halved shrimp, shredded lettuce, dried flakes of onion and soft, thin noodles wrapped in chewy, sticky rice paper -- with a sweet peanut sauce for dipping and broad leaves of damp romaine lettuce for wrapping. A tiny bowl of chopped cilantro follows, then a plate piled with mung-bean sprouts, mint leaves on the stem, whole stalks of mild purple basil, bright green slices of jalapeño and quarters of lime. Already on the table are salt and pepper, a shaker of cayenne, two kinds of hoisin sauce, a bottle of soy sauce, white vinegar, dark vinegar, a honey pot of red-pepper paste that's murderously hot, and a squeeze bottle of Sriracha, which is what the Devil uses on his hot wings. There are disposable chopsticks, plastic pho spoons sketched with flowers -- a whole kitchen's worth of spices, herbs, sauces and implements, all to help customize the pho that arrives in a huge bowl, filled to the brim. Pho is all about generosity, about more than you expected and more than you could ever need. I set Douglas Adams aside and begin the tinkering process.

Pho 2000 offers nine kinds of pho, each requiring a different touch of this or that to be made perfect. The seafood pho, its pale broth studded with shrimp, fish balls and fat, rubbery chunks of squid, needs lime -- two squeezes -- as well as a little mint rolled between the fingers to release its flavor, mung beans for texture and maybe a dollop of sweet hoisin. The Super Bowl, on the other hand, is so packed with competing flavors and textures -- all the seafood, plus slivered tripe like tiny little octopi with stubbly arms of muscle; tough ingots of brisket; meatballs; thin-sliced raw steak; and a gooey, gelatinous slab of tendon that melts as soon as it touches the hot broth -- that it needs nothing but some basil leaves dropped in whole.

But tonight I have the pho bo vien -- the broth with meatballs -- which is one of the simplest, most subtle bowls on the board. I tear up basil, add some cilantro, a squirt of Sriracha, two drops of soy and stir. It's not quite there, so I add some whole basil and let the pho steep, then give it just the barest squeeze of lime. With good pho, you can smell when it comes together. A fragrant steam rises off the bowl, heady with kitchen spice plus all that I've added. I lower my head, close my eyes and taste.

Pho 2000
3150 South Peoria Street
Aurora, Colorado (near Denver)
303-751-4488
Hour s: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. daily</font>

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