Pho Hung on Bloor?

No more to climb those skinny stairs, never again to sit at a table for two, not in that red and yellow room with its wide windows overlooking the museum and the music school across the street.

The last bowl of soup has been served.

I’d wear a black armband if I could; a black bib would be better. The landlord has sold the building so that condos might be built.

I knew it was coming.

I’d known it was coming for years but I was in denial. I finally had to admit the loss when I walked in for lunch on the last day.

I ordered my usual: pho ga — chicken soup to you — and on the side, cha gio — crisp spring rolls, also to you. To me, no more, not there.

The woman who scrambles my eggs, a traditionalist, would always order pho tai: rare beef to you. To her, no more, not there.

If I am bereft, it is because I have had a long, hot and salty-sour, noodle-slurping, shirt-stained relationship with the national dish of Vietnam; there were days when I have eaten pho for breakfast and for supper.

Yes, I know.

I’ll always have Pho Hung on Spadina.

But the Bloor location was central to my needs, no matter the direction of the day; it was my true north in a bowl, my Ultima Thule with hot sauce, my Greenwich Time with basil and lime.

On that last day, I sat down with the founder, Thoi Nguyen, and also with his son Thanh, who is known in the family as Hung.

Pho Hung, get it?

Thoi said, “I’ll miss it. I feel bad. Spadina is more busy, but this location grossed 80 per cent, so no complaints.”

He opened his first restaurant on Spadina in 1986. He had been a businessman and a farmer in Vietnam when he lost everything to the communists. After a bleak stay in a refugee camp, he came with his family to Canada.

Thoi worked as a roofer; at night he and his wife were cleaners in a chicken plant, and the kids delivered papers, and his wife did piecework in the rag trade.

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The restaurant was a gamble.

It paid off.

Pho Hung on Spadina was so successful that Thoi opened Pho Hung on Bloor four years later, and the family opened a branch in Mississauga a year or so ago.

On that sad last day of the Pho Hung on Bloor, the place was packed with hip Asian kids, university professors, music students and downtown office workers.

“Oh, dear,” said a teacher when she learned of the closing. “I came here once a week.” Her friend, another teacher: “Sometimes more than once.” They don’t know where they’ll go now.

My pal Susan, who works at the museum, said, “There’s nothing like this around here.”

Hung sighed. “I’m the one who built this up.” And here is how he did it: The place was open six days a week for 22 years; the cooks in the kitchen made chicken broth three times a week — 24 pails, 16 litres per pail, a lot of bowls of pho. And that’s just the chicken; the beef broth is more traditional, and more popular — 10 pails of broth a day for all those years of days.

Hung said, “It’s my blood. I love it. I feel bad. There’s nothing I can do.” The tables and chairs and the kitchen equipment will be auctioned off. The artwork will remain with the family. Hung is looking for another location downtown, but rents are high. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Chopsticks, too.

Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca