Here, as there, the landscape of desire is strewn with crumpled tissues, the spent expressions of human lust. Short pink plastic trash baskets overflow with little white paper balls, wet tumbleweeds are littered everywhere. Walk three feet up to the counter and they will cling embarrassingly to the soles of your feet, trail back to your table as if you are hurriedly exiting a peep-show booth. Unlike with sex, however, this walk of shame comes before touchdown. For one’s efforts, after a long wait on line, the handover of a few dong (the unfortunate name for Vietnam’s unit of currency), a jostle, and a squeeze in between strangers at a low table on a sidewalk, one is rewarded with perfection.

Broth—usually (but not absolutely always) the savory-sweet extraction of many beef bone, heavy on the marrow. Not too dark—definitely not too light. Chances are, there are three or four enormous pots of the stuff going now behind the counter, steam rising to the ceiling, the proprietor ladling the stuff straight off the top. Locals will tell you it’s all about the broth. If the broth isn’t right, the best ingredients in the world aren’t going to save it. Rice noodles. And they’d better be right, too. Too soft, too old, or too cooked? It’s shit. Too chewy? Same. Handmade and cooked to order—or at least in constantly ongoing batches, please. Classically, in Hanoi, the meat component is beef—and beef tendon, but preferences vary as to the exact mix. The counter behind the glass of my favorite place in the Old Quarter is stacked with pre-boiled beef shoulders: the perfect balance of lean and fat; and many prefer this—and only this: sliced ever so thinly onto the surface of their broth, where it wilts and relaxes and nearly dissolves into sublime tenderness. Some purists, however, insist entirely on raw beef, sliced at exactly the right degree of thinness and at the very last minute, added to the broth on the way out, so that the customers can “cook” it lightly themselves in the hot broth of their bowl by simply tossing it gently with their noodles. I, like many locals, prefer a mix of raw and cooked. The unattractive-sounding tendon, cooked properly by a master pho-maker, should be the best thing in the world—even for the uninitiated. Rather than being rubbery or tough, as one would expect of tendon, it should have just enough bite, just enough resistance, dissolving into fatty, marrow-like substance after just a few chews—a counterpoint to the wispy, all-too-brief pleasures of the beef. There’re usually very few of the slender, translucent little tubes in one’s bowl, and if you’re unhappy to discover one on your spoon, then they’re doing it wrong.

You complete pho at the table—and unlike with many similar dishes, where everybody’s got their own way of doing things, in Hanoi there seems to be an accepted orthodoxy. A dot or two of chili paste, a tiny drizzle of chili sauce, a generous squeeze of lime, toss lightly with chopsticks in the right hand—and spoon with the left. Ideally, one wants a perfect marriage of beef, broth, and noodle in each mouthful. Slurping is encouraged. As is leaning down into your bowl. As is lifting the bowl to near your mouth.

There will be a generous plate or basket of greens, herbs, and sprouts next to a bowl of pho—usually Thai basil, mint, and cilantro—and one adds as needed, periodically incorporating elements of freshness and crunch and a welcome bitterness to one’s mix, and one can pick idly at the occasional leaf as well, as kind of a palate cleanser.

I am hardly an expert on this subject, by the way—merely an enthusiast. But this is what I have observed and been told, over time. What is not debatable is that a perfect bowl of Hanoi pho is a balanced meeting of savory, sweet, sour, spicy, salty, and even umami—a gentle commingling of textures as well: soft and giving, wet and slippery, slightly chewy, momentarily resistant but ultimately near-diaphanous, light and heavy, leafy and limp, crunchy and tender. There—and nearly not there at all. Were this already not enough to jerk a rusty steak knife across your grandma’s throat, empty her bank account, and head off to Hanoi, consider the colors: bright red chilies; the more subdued, richer-red toasted-chili paste; bright green vegetables; white sprouts. Pinkish-red raw meat, turning slowly gray as it cooks in your bowl, the deep brown colors of the cooked meat, white noodles, light amber broth. Nearly all God’s colors in one bowl.

This is a sophisticated and deceptively subtle thing, Hanoi pho. I do not pretend to fully understand and appreciate its timeless beauty. Here, describing pho as more like love than sex would be more accurate—as there is simply not enough time on this planet, I think, to ever truly know it. It is an unconditional kind of love, in that it doesn’t matter where you enjoy it—elevated only a few feet off a dirty street corner or at the sleekly designed counter of an overdecorated lounge. It contains, like the man said, “multitudes.”

Sometimes I think I should feel a little guilty about writing stuff like the above.

It’s porn. Albeit food and travel porn.

I had it, I lived it—and, chances are, most of the people reading this have not.

It seems ungracious to share some experiences. Though I’m sure it’s difficult to accept, my parents brought me up to believe that showing off was a bad thing, a sign of generally bad manners. (I’m not saying those values took hold, just that I might have heard them mentioned.)

Some things I’ve seen, some experiences at tables and counters around the world, I feel a little bad telling people about. I may not hesitate to put them on TV at every opportunity—but that’s…different somehow, in that it’s somebody else, the evil camera people, the editors, doing the telling. This conveniently lets me off the hook.

But writing about sights and sounds and flavors that might otherwise be described as orgiastic—and doing it in a way that is calculated to inspire prurient interest, lust, and envy in others…that raises more questions in my mind as to…I don’t know…the moral dimension.

Sitting here, choosing words, letter by letter, on the keyboard with the explicit intention of telling you about something I did or something I ate and making you as hungry and miserable as I can—surely that’s wrong.

But fuck it.

Who doesn’t like a good wank now and then?

Imagine…

There’s a roast goose in Hong Kong—Mongkok, near the outskirts of the city, the place looks like any other. But you sink your teeth into the quickly hacked pieces and you know you’re experiencing something special. Layers of what can only be described as enlightenment, one extraordinary sensation after another as the popils of the tongue encounter first the crispy, caramelized skin, then air, then fat—the juicy, sweet yet savory, ever so slightly gamey meat, the fat just barely managing to retain its corporeal form before quickly dematerializing into liquid. These are the kinds of tastes and textures that come with year after year of the same man making the same dish. That man—the one there, behind the counter with the cleaver—hacking roast pork, and roast duck, and roast goose as he’s done since he was a child and as his father did before him. He’s got it right now for sure—and, sitting there at one of the white Formica tables, Cantonese pop songs oozing and occasionally distorting from an undersized speaker, you know it, too. In fact, you’re pretty goddamn sure this is the best roast goose on the whole planet. Nobody is eating goose better than you at this precise moment. Maybe in the whole history of the world there has never been a better goose. Ordinarily, you don’t know if you’d go that far describing a dish—but now, with that ethereal goose fat dribbling down your chin, the sound of perfectly crackling skin playing inside your head to an audience of one, hyperbole seems entirely appropriate.