 Key
West Bar
Hops
The
Keep
Calm and Hop On Tour
Hops MacBarley's Ongoing
Key West Bar Boondoggle
Hop
#333
Pho
King
Awesome
626
Duval
Street
Sunday,
February
28, 4:20 PM
Crazy
Lady
(draught) $5.91
Google
tells
me that Pho is a style of soup that is the national dish of
Vietnam. It typically
consists of bone broth, rice noodles and thinly sliced meat. Well, I'll be.
And,
apparently,
these guys are the King of it.
Their
website
says that they do quite a variety of other Asian foods as well,
and that they do dine-in (bar or table), walk-up, and take-out via
phone or internet. They
also deliver!
Right. So much for the restaurant, this
is a Bar Tour.
Pho
King
Awesome is also a Sake Bar. It
says so right on their sign.
It’s also says Noodle Bar, but I’ll ignore that for now. I ain’t drinkin’
noodles.
 I
have to admit that the name is what jumped this establishment
right into the mix. I
saw it last night
and had to Hop it.
At
first
glance, I had thought “restaurant all the way”, but as I passed, I
saw the unmistakable shape of a bar, and a large one at that! The bar, in fact,
dominates
the room. It is long,
high and nicely polished wood.
Great Bar!
The
seats
are tall and padded
with curved backs. Big thumbs-up from the Hopster.
There
are
tables along the wall and down through the narrowed
mid-part of the restaurant, and more in the back where it widens
out again.
The
hallway
tables are pretty cool too: polished
wood tops sitting on large wooden barrels.
And each
one can seat as many as six.
Probably more if they sit on one another’s laps.
A
lovely young woman took my drink order.
I was prepared to do a Sapporo or a Tsing Tao or some
other Far Eastern brew, but the last tap I saw said “Crazy Lady”
on it, and I decided to stay local.
Turns
out
that the beer selection is wider than I thought.
The fridge behind the bar had a good dozen or more beers
in bottle or cans, and, of course, a couple of flavors of White
Claw.
She
brought
me a menu, though I had already said my usual, “Just here for a
beer.” The menu is on
the wall anyway, and even easier to read up there.
I asked how much I owed, and she said “$6.00.”
I
have officially reached the point where I think of $6 for a draft
beer as a decent deal. Sigh. I gave her seven and
thanked her. And it was
actually only $5.50, but tax made it $5.91, which, sensibly
rounds up to $6.00. They could change their selling price
to $5.59, to round it up evenly with the tax, and make an extra
8 or 9 cents per pour, but this way the server gets it.
Hey, sell 100 beers and you make $9 more in tips!
 My
Crazy
Lady was hitting The Spot. I
had been tooling around the island on Trekko The Wonder Bike, so
The Spot was large and a cold splash was just what I needed.
I
was only here for about 20 minutes. A few people came up to
the front counter and ordered some food to go.
A couple of guys sat to my left and ordered food to stay. It
wasn’t
much business, but it wasn’t exactly dinner time either.
The
tunes
were dance-club-ish, but mellow-ish-dance-club-ish. There's
probably a word for that, hm? The big video screen seemed
to be in synch sometimes, and other times not.
At one point, there were three very good-looking young
women dancing seductively up close to the camera and three guys in
the back of the room dancing like guys.
It was pretty funny.
There's not a heck of a lot else to say about Pho King
Awesome. The name is catchy, you have to admit. The
town I grew up in would never have allowed this name. They
didn't even allow bars! Trying to keep the youth from
turning to demon alcohol. You see how well that turned
out. =)
So,
this
was Hop #333. One
third of the way through The Keep Calm And Hop On Tour, and
one-third of the way to … 1000 BARS!
Another 15 years oughta do it!
|
