100 Favorite Dishes: Pho from Pho 95

As a countdown to the Best of Denver 2010, coming April 1, Cafe Society is serving up a hundred of our favorite dishes in Denver. Send your own nominations to cafe@westword.com.

No. 96 Pho - any pho -- from Pho 95

There isn't a day that goes by where someone doesn't ask me what my favorite restaurant is. It's a question I struggle with -- and rarely answer -- because I don't have a "favorite" restaurant. My restaurant-of-the-moment is wholly mood dependent. That said, there are restaurants that I return to, again and again, because of a specific dish -- because that dish, no matter what time of the day I'm slouching in the booth, my nose buried in my plate (or bowl), is so unbelievably, impossibly perfect that the rest of my life turns off and tunes out. I'm talking about the pho at Pho 95, which makes me happier than just about any other dish in Denver. The enormous bowls of noodles, floating in brilliant broths stockpiled with raw and cooked meats, arrive with heaps of greens that glisten, rings of jalapeno and lime wedges. It's the most pho-nominal pho in town.