I’ve been sick recently and food while sick is always problematic. Flavours finish into a cardboard-like slag of extremes, if even that. I push water and tea into myself at a staggering rate. My head swims with congestion and the throes of a cold that seems to have it out for me. Perhaps this is a sickness beyond a flu, but I’ve no desire to head to a doctor. Popping Fisherman’s Friends like candy and buying out the supply of Neocitrine has carried me through.
That said, I was pulled out for phō by the Cheery Milliner and the Lanky Linguist, each claiming that soup is the answer to any sickness that plagues me. Ginger, a block or three away from my place, is cheap Vietnamese placed within a convenient walk. It’s dangerous, really. While I could walk to Spadina for really good phō (up a staircase to a second floor restaurant south west of Dundas on Spadina, its name eludes me), Ginger is right here!
The crispy rolls were a welcome bite of crunch and shredded chicken to start the meal off. Something small to tide us along the few minutes we waited. Ginger is nothing if not convenient and prompt with their food.
My bowl of soup arrived, and I was reminded that the small bowls are more than enough to plunge my face into—the large bowls are always excessive, but filling and incredible value for their price. The Linguist and I carried our bowls back to the serving counter where we each load them up with lime, indistinct leaves, chilli, hoisin, sirracha (or some similar chili sauce variant), grab cutlery and return to the Milliner, whose bowl of vermicelli overflowing with slivers of cucumber and large oblongs of tofu.
Soup was good. Once the Linguist and I finished the contents of our bowl, we descended on the vermicelli, and to our surprise unrehearsed even more tofu bidding among the noodles filling the bowl’s bottom. This is not a restaurant that scrimps on its pieces, though it was a little upsetting that my phō had rare beef and meat balls, but no sign of tripe or that slab of jellied fat and meat that melts so well into the broth. Alas, the cost of convenience.
We’re booted out of the closing Ginger after we finish our meal, and the Cheery Milliner heads home. The Lanky Linguist and I turn homebound also, the Linguist to resume study, and I to fall back into the sickly torpor that has overcome too much of my week.
Ginger
212 Queen St W, Toronto, ON M5V 1Z2