Our new pot of gold

I’m certainly not the first person to have been caught in LA’s mighty wrath.  Nor will I be the last to have my soul singed in a place most outsiders think has streets paved with gold. But as much as I hate to admit it, with all that bad came a few nuggets of good.  One of those being a dark and dingy Asian restaurant we liked to call Ord Noodle. 

It was strictly Thai food, a type neither my husband nor I had ever experienced within the white-bread boundaries of our close-minded hometowns. And at first glance, it honestly seemed to be the very reason the phrase “hole in the wall” had ever been muttered in the first place. It was small, poorly decorated, and worst of all, wore the dreaded “B” rating, instantly becoming the ugly sister among a block full of beautiful A’s.  But as fate would have it, that little restaurant was about to become a big part of our lives, being the very spot a coworker and his brand new Thai wife would ask us out to lunch one crisp fall day in October. 

Although reluctant, we entered its grimy glass doors and sat down, ordering something we had no idea how to even pronounce.  Maybe I simply hadn’t opened my mind wide enough to embrace it, but as first impressions go, I assumed we’d never ever be returning. But my husband, well, he had other plans. To know him, is to know that he’s got this unique way of finding the magic in things nobody else can. And this time, at this little dive Thai restaurant, he had found it in a huge, steaming bowl of broth and vegetable soup. I just sat there and watched as his nose hovered over the climbing steam, inhaling its intoxicating spices like a drug addict.  He then proceeded to reach for his chopsticks, as he tightly clenched them in one hand, grabbing a healthy bunch of long hot noodles then quickly slurping them up out of this newly found pot of gold.  It was the only soup in town that could make his cheeks red and his nose run. And it was clear to me then, at that moment, that he had completely fallen in love. 

And that love turned into quite an obsession, as we visited our new mistress almost three times a week.  We become so regular that we even tossed around the idea of one day learning Thai.  But this love affair was destined for an unhappy ending, as only three short years later we finally made the decision to move back to Boston. A decision my husband reluctantly went with, especially for the fact that leaving our sunny LA home now held a much more unpalatable consequence. 

When we finally did make the move, you better believe I searched like hell to find an equally delicious dish; my search turning into a bizarre sort of noodle bowl blind date.  I’d first coax my husband into trying yet another new Thai place, waiting with bated breath for him to finally take that first gulp.  But with each new taste came the same sad realization that nothing, and I mean nothing on this new coast, would ever come close to his beloved Ord Noodle. 

So time passed, and my soup seeking days seemed to be over. I was working now, and I had neither the time nor the energy to keep up with this wild soup chase.  That is until one particular night, when a Thai place called “Pho Countryside” unexpectedly appeared within my Yelp search results. It looked perfect, but at the same time, a total long shot. But something in my heart, and my taste buds, told me to give it a try. So that’s exactly what we did, as I braced for yet another soup failure, at the same time, making a mental promise to myself that no matter what happened, this would be the end to all the madness.

Ever wonder what the gates of heaven look like? Well, that night, it was Pho Countryside. Because from the minute we walked in, we knew this place was special. It had the same feel as Ord, the same smell, and if you looked just hard enough through their tinted windows, you could even make out the same beautiful outline of palms blowing in the wind.  But the true test was still to come, as I anxiously watched my husband. Each movement seemed to happen in slow motion, as the world around us suddenly stopped and my stomach quickly tightened into a thousand tiny knots. But the moment he looked up at me with that same beautiful twinkle in his eye, it all but gave him away. 

But to be honest, it had never really been about soup in the first place, but about making him feel OK about leaving all the glitz and glamor of LA. And about somehow making him happy to be back, or at least a little less sad.  But right now, in this little Thai restaurant, the things we had left behind seemed to matter a whole lot less; as we sipped our soup, laughed about our day, and enjoyed this new found magic cascading all around us.