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He's trying to charge $100 for phở in Ho Chi Minh City. That's 50 times the usual price. I had to try it.

  • Only one restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has a Michelin star.
  • It's run by Chef Peter Cuong Franklin, who opened a new restaurant last month.

"The implicit rule of phở is: Don't fuck with phở." Those were the words of Peter Cuong Franklin, the founder and head chef at Anan Saigon, when he gave me his take on phở's controversial history earlier this year.

Franklin's reputation goes beyond his proclivity for irreverent language. Franklin fled warworn Vietnam in 1975 when he was 12 years old. He went on to earn a degree from Yale and forged a career in investment banking in the US. Unenthused by the financial services industry, Franklin decided to go a different route: a decade later he enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu in Bangkok, worked with some of the world's best chefs, and launched two Vietnamese restaurants in Hong Kong.

In 2017, he resettled in Vietnam and opened Anan Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City. Six years later, Anan Saigon is one of Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, has a Michelin star, and has been recommended by outlets including The New York Times and Time.

Franklin spearheads a movement he has labeled Cuisine Mới, or New Vietnamese Cuisine. As the Michelin Guide wrote in 2018, Franklin's work "connects traditional cuisine with modern presentation and techniques."

So when I heard whispers that Franklin was opening a restaurant dedicated to phở, Vietnam's venerated national dish, my curiosity was already piqued. And that was before I discovered the flagship dish would cost $100 — around 50 times more than a standard bowl of phở in Vietnam.

The dish reflects how Ho Chi Minh City is changing. Ho Chi Minh City is one of the world's fastest-growing millionaire hotspots, according to a report released in April by investment migration consultancy Henley & Partners.

"A bowl of phở worth $100 is no longer a strange thing," Nguyen Manh Hung, the author of five cookbooks and the presenter of a cooking show on VTV, Vietnam Television, told me. People certainly won't eat the dish every day at that price point, he said, but wealthier Ho Chi Minh City residents are happy to spend money on new experiences.

All of which brought me to one question: Just how was Franklin going to open a contemporary Vietnamese restaurant focused on phở and not "fuck" with it? Was this the real deal, or just a headline-grabbing marketing ploy? I needed to find out.

Pot Au Phở, the new restaurant, was still in its soft opening period when I visited at the end of September, but I made my reservation, preordered the $100 phở — as is suggested on the website — and tried to keep an open mind.

Insider covered the cost of my meal in full.

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