The store-front window glows with purple and green neon letters and a giant-sized bowl labeled “Phở” steams phosphorescent white squiggles. An awning made for a much larger establishment slopes downward from its posts, a white-labelled “Kim Son Seafood Grill” printed on its wilted, scalloped edges.  Kim Son Seafood is too bright for this strip mall. The street lights pale in comparison. SUVs fresh from the carwash wait in the darkness in the parking lot. Cars with open windows whiz by carrying high school students bored without homework, driving purposelessly, smoking cigarettes for the novelty. Blasts of their music hit our ears for a second as they speed by. The other businesses are dark and silent, their wares protected by sheets of plate glass reflecting the trees and squat buildings from across the street.

We walk inside. The owner rushes over from the far end of the restaurant to greet us. We are regulars, so his smile is wide at the corners of his mouth and sincere at the eyes. He’s wearing a blue short-sleeved button down and a pair of industrial strength, thick-soled white tennis shoes. His militarily square black haircut accents the looseness of his jowls leaking down the bottom of his jawbone.

“Hello, hello!” he ushers us to our booth, half-swooping the room with a burgundy menu three times over.

He places the menus in front of us, saying he’ll give us a minute.

A large framed photo of the Rat Pack hangs on the wall. The brightness continues inside the restaurant, which is a mish-mash of previous incarnations of different ethnicities. Yellow-painted tiki huts, a wall pasted with bamboo wallpaper, mahoghany tables and ripped red booths clashing on opposite sides of the space. Our booth has deep soup spoons and chopsticks in a metal container. Soy sauce, Asian barbeque sauce, and a red spicy sauce with a green tip sit on the either side of the holder.

I put down my menu after ritualistically flipping through it. Vietnamese dishes cover the pages, but regulars don’t need menus. I know I am having Phở, a noodle soup with cilantro, basil, lime, and meatballs. My mother takes more time paging through the pictures of exotic food—salted catfish, sticky rice with mung beans--before deciding on fried rice. She gets it every time we come here or any other Asian restaurant. She wouldn’t come on her own.  

I take the minute she’s flipping through the menu to glance around the place. The owner’s daughter sits at an unused table coloring in red crayon into a Winnie the Pooh coloring book. A silent couple stares past one another to the street and to the back wall, waiting for the saving grace of their food.

The owner comes over to the table again.

“Ready to order?” he asks.

We nod.

“Fried rice?” he says to my mother with a little smile.

My mom and I laugh, she a little sheepishly.

“And for you?” he asks me.

“Phở with meatballs, please,” I say.

“Good choice. Thank you,” he says, efficiently snapping up the menus.

He brings out iced waters and we settle into our routine. We’ve been coming here for six years now. Spring rolls and vermicelli noodles are my idea of home cooking. Here, sore throats are remedied with spicy soups and bruised egos are mended with simple consolations. She has dripped words of disdain about nasty coworkers here; I have slapped my hands on the table in frustration at my sweater-plaid-shirt-glasses-mullet summer boss, Todd. I used to tell her about my anxieties about The Music Man in the eighth grade here. She used to complain how my stubborn grandmother turned down a vacation because it would be too much trouble. For a single mother and her only daughter, our meatloaf and mashed potatoes comfort food is this.