As I mentioned awhile ago, I’ve been eating at Kim Phung for a long time, one of the local Vietnamese cheap-bowl shops in my neighborhood. For several years now, I’ve actually disliked Kim Phung. It just got boring, and kind of too greasy spoon for me.

Of late, Kim has come to like Kim Phung. She loves the soup there, the pho. Since we’ve been going there, I’ve actually come to like it again. Their fried-rice was always good, and I like the tofu fried-rice especially.

My favorite dish had always been the charbroiled pork with egg-rolls. A weird sort of dish of just those two things (with the egg-rolls sliced up) over a ball of vermicelli:

I had this dish again recently, and it was surprisingly as tasty as I remember it. In fact, almost ten year ago now, I wrote-up the below sort of homage to Kim Phung, and the charbroiled pork and egg-roll vermicelli:

Number 54

Few restaurants in Austin seem as much as part of the city as the venerable Vietnamese Noodle House Kim Phung. Located in what’s become Austin’s “Little Vietnam”—centered around 183 and Lamar—Kim Phung is one of the few places in Austin that’s gently weathered, and grown with, the storm of new money. It’s been expanded once, and the old, red menus were recently re-printed, but as I’ve sat over my bowls of noodles and lunch specials over the past few weeks, I’ve come to realize that Kim Phung is a reflection, however oddly filtered through the ever-smiling Vietnamese waitresses, of Austin’s esprit de corps at any given time. But, as a restaurant, the experience of eating at Kim Phung must come before any sort of deep thought on the “meaning” of Kim Phung.

I’ve eaten at Kim Phung for, well, at least 8, maybe even 10 years. As it has for so many other regulars, it’s become my restaurant, where I don’t require a menu to order, where the wait staff greets me with a familiar smile, and where the food is ever-delicious. Invariably, I order number 54⎯ “Charbroiled Pork and Egg roll Vermicelli Noodle.” Occasionally, I sift through the menu, trying to find a different dish to order, but when the waitress comes, I say “54, please,” without hesitation. Initially, I feel some trepidation about not trying something new, but when my familiar 54 arrives, with its tasty toppings of pork strips and egg roll slices, my menu misgivings vanish.

Besides, there’s little time to peruse the menu because the wait staff swiftly arrive at your table, requesting your order. Kim Phung isn’t like a chain restaurant where you can tell your waiter, “Oh, we haven’t decided yet. Could you come back?” and expect the waiter to “check-up” on you every few minutes. Delaying your order brings a stiff 15 minute wait before the waitress returns. The waitresses are there to take orders, not dote on indecisive patrons doddering with the menu. And that suits me just fine; I know what I want before I sit down, friendly 54.
But if I’ve brought an inexperienced Kim Phung eater, the table serves up a few distractions to pass the time with. The chopsticks, all stored in a box on the table are fun to twirl around in your hand like midget batons. And fiddling with the wide Chinese spoons, stored next to the chopsticks in a special spoon-slot box, takes the edge of waiting while my guest scourers the menu.

I sometimes wonder how clean the chopsticks and spoons are; they have been sitting out on the table all day. Conceivable, previous patrons could have sullied them and then uncouthly put them back in the on-table containers. But, as I’ve watched fellow eaters over the years, I’ve noticed a technique several Vietnamese patrons employ to prevent eating with befouled utensils. Before using the chopsticks or spoons, they wipe each with a napkin and carefully rest them on a bowl to keep the now cleaned utensils from touching the table-top glass. This seems an adequate precautionary measure to avoid past patron misconduct with the chopsticks and spoons.

While I’m cleaning my chopsticks and spoons and, perhaps, having small talk with whomever I’ve brought along, the cooks are preparing the food. It doesn’t take long for the dish delivery, usually five minutes or less. The waitresses brings the food on a cork-lined tray and asks who’s ordered what. I point at who ordered each dish that she holds up, and raise my hand when she says, “Number 54. Pork, egg roll?”

Each bowl comes with a small dish of amber colored sauce. This is the Fish Sauce, and though it’s sweet and garnished with slim carrot slivers, I always send it back, mindful that it’s made from fermented fish juice. I’m not sure what fish juice is, but it’s not something I relish marring 54 with. And it has a horrific odor of decaying fish too.

With the bowl in front of me, I survey the succulent serving: pork strips and sliced egg rolls over a swirled ball of noodles, set on a lettuce pellicle. Asian restaurants, I’ve been told, lack knives because the food is already cut into bite sized pieces. Despite this, I usually brake the egg roll slices into halves with my thumbs and forefingers. This halving helps equalize the topping to noodle ratio, an important balance to maintain.

The noodle ball is much larger than the egg roll slices and pork strips combined, and if an equal ratio between the two isn’t maintained, I’ll be left with excess noodles after finishing the toppings. But the noodles, on their own, are quite lackluster. Rather, it is the mingling of the toppings and the noodles in each bite that creates the characteristically vigorous 54 flavor. Consequently, the topping must be sparingly rationed out with each bite of noodle. The aptitude to pace the toppings with the noodles is the mark of an expert Kim Phung patron.

Eating the dish is an exact process. First, with deft chopstick skill, pinch your choice of pork or egg roll, then clamp a clump of noodles. This chopsticked bite goes into the mouth with no delay. The servings are hefty, and afford many bites to repeat this experience with.

Chopsticks and Chinese spoons are the only utensils provided at the table, and when you ask for silverware, you’re handed a fork and spoon wrapped tightly in a paper napkin. The fork-and-spoon folks don’t realize that eating noodles properly is impossible with the fork. And the Western spoon is simply out of the question. No amount of spoon-skill will ever yield a favorably sized bite of noodles: finding no purchase, the noodles slide off the spoon every time.

The proper way to eat noodles, as I’ve said, is to pinch a topping and then a clump of noodles. A fork, though it can pierce a topping, cannot grasp a knot of noodles like chopsticks can (and piercing your food seems such a barbarous habit). Furthermore, noodles, being noodliy, are not solid enough to be punctured and securely held on the end of a fork as, say, a piece of steak is. You’re likely to drop your bite in your lap instead of your mouth. And that’s far from polite. Despite these perfectly clear culinary mechanics, people still persist in requesting “silverware.”

The waitresses have a sixth sense about patrons wanting a fork and spoon. The request usually comes right after the noodle bowls are set down on the table. The fork-and-spoon patron looks up, begins to mouth the word silverware, but is promptly interrupted by the waitresses, “Youwantsilverware? OK.” She promptly returns, pulls the tightly wrapped fork and spoon out of her front apron pocket, and shrewdly sets them down on the table.

This, to me, is the Kim Phung process, and in a way, a very real part of the place. But, my overly anal thinking on the how to eat at Kim Phung is more an artifact of the old crowd, the people who were labeled “Slackers” in the early 90’s and demanded cheap, “non-corporate” food, man. Kim Phung has adopted, and even changed with the new money in Austin, just as the Slackers have—many of them finally dressing in the sleek, well cut, dark clothes that mark trendy, young success.

One of Kim Phung’s draws, early on was the BYOB policy. People brought 6 packs and bottles of wine to drink with their meals, and it’s tragic to see that spirit drying up. But as people work more for that tech-money, as in the rest of Austin does, work responsibility becomes more important that a few drinks with lunch. The bottles of beer were a dog-tag of sorts for die-hard Kim Phung’ers, but now the dog-tags seem to be Dell badges and prox-cards.
The change isn’t necessarily tragic, but it does show how Kim Phung reflects our city. When Austin was a Slacker hotbed, so was Kim Phung with it’s Chronicle Reader’s Award for “Best Lunch Under $5”; and now the long, narrow hall is full of tech folks grabbing a quick, and still under $5, lunch. This is what Kim Phung has been to me and the pack of loyal followers who’ve lived in our town through the change of the last decade: a clear, tasty window into the spirit of Austin.