A small restaurant in Alhambra offers a pho eating challenge. Of course, you must know about it going in. There's no mention of it anywhere inside the place. It's not on the menu. It's not the wall. I bet regular customers don't even have a damn clue about it. Ask, and ye shall receive. I knew about it because of a listing on eatfeats.
It's not your standard pho challenge, but it's fair. You have one hour to entirely consume three large bowls of piping hot Vietnamese soup.. that's beef, noodles, broth, and all. It's about $25 if you fail. I used ice water to cool it down, but in the end the toughest part is drinking all the salty broth. At least I wasn't dehydrated afterward. No cameras followed me, but I think a few people would get a kick out of seeing me drink some of the broth through a straw.
When I finished, the server came over and expressed a bit of dismay. He wanted to know how I managed to finish under 30 minutes, when all of the previous winners needed just under an hour. I didn't have an answer. Maybe I pushed myself a bit harder than they did.
The size of this challenge is not overwhelming in any case. An hour later, I managed to eat a meal at In-N-Out while visiting relatives nearby. If you like pho, give this place a try. Their vanilla pudding wasn't bad either. Don't expect to see any writing on the wall.
