The Making of Our Pho

Borough Blog
The Making of Our Pho

HOW WE MADE OUR NEW PHO

You told us our Organic Chicken Pho Broth wasn’t good enough.

So we listened...

Your feedback made it clear the recipe needed more than a tweak, it needed a fresh start. Last year, we set out to create a Pho broth that truly delivered on flavour, authenticity, and nourishment. Slow-simmered, organic, and made properly.

Our founder Ros partnered with Vietnamese award-winning cookbook author Uyen Luu, and after months of testing, from her home kitchen to our West London site, the perfect recipe was created.

Keep reading to enjoy an extract from Uyen's substack 'Around The Table' where she talks about her journey reformulating our Pho...

Cut me open and I will pour out broth. In Vietnam, phở is mostly eaten outside the home. Elsewhere, it became the dish no immigrant could live without—a lifetime of craving. A weekly pot of phở simmers quietly in the background, exhaling the perfume of its goodness.

Over the years, while cooking for my weekly Vietnamese supper clubs, I’ve seen bowls of phở tranquillise jubilant birthday crowds as well as alleviate grief among mourners. We are here because she loved eating phở, they’d tell me, remembering and celebrating a beautiful Rosie.

Even after my own father’s funeral, my uncle and I rushed to a phở restaurant, sat, and waited in silence.

When the steaming bowls arrived, they soothed decades of pain and family drama; each sip cradled the loss as if it were a sympathising friend.

I’ve spent over a decade writing and thinking about phở, as it has popped up in almost everything I do. A simple bowl of nourishment—sustenance, purpose, nostalgia, and a sense of belonging—brings humane comfort, if only for twenty minutes.

Would you like to re-develop Borough Broth’s chicken phở recipe? said Ros Heathcote, founder of Borough Broth. It would mean anyone could buy a pack of broth from the supermarket and eat phở whenever the craving hit.

Uyen's friends and family trying our NEW Pho recipe

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Yes, I said. It was as if I had found a life jigsaw slotting into place. For all the life-changing positives I’ve received as a cook and food writer, for all I’ve learned through years of constant cooking, I could now give back—offering something meaningful to a community of phở lovers.

I met Ros when she first started Borough Broth, many years ago, when our mutual friend and colleague Melissa Hemsley invited us over for dinner and we hit it off over broth chat. I can completely geek out over broth, kimchi, chiffon cake, celluloid film, and books.

Read the rest of Uyen's Substack here.