DELICIOUS

Finding the right flavor

Pho

By ELISSA CHUDWIN

DID YOU KNOW: In Vietnam, pho typically is served for breakfast.

onsistency is key at Pho Hanabi, so Eric Ton spent years searching for a practical and flavor-filled recipe.

He constructed a kitchen in his backyard reminiscent of a mad scientist’s laboratory to experiment with seasoning and cooking methods. He traveled to 10 states across the country to sample the Vietnamese noodle soup, too.

“The culture of eating pho is so different from not just stateto-state but city-to-city,” he says.

takes longer, and it doesn’t bring out all the flavors.”

Besides the quality of the menu items, Ton is focused on providing his staff with a positive experience, which he believes will translate into customer service.

“The most exciting part is my employees,” he says. “They are young and energetic and willing to learn. I feel like I can share more with them than making pho or working at a restaurant.”

Ton — a consultant who launched the Northwest Highway restaurant — embraces the unconventional. The engineer and culinary enthusiast is not a restauranteur, but he has a business-savvy mind and years of pho-making experience that he hopes will make the eatery a permanent neighborhood fixture.

His process is under wraps, but the soup contains an array of spices, including cinnamon and cardamom, and is served with bean sprouts and basil leaves.

“As a science and engineering guy, it does not make sense if we do it the traditional way,” Ton says. “It

PHO HANABI

Ambiance: casual eatery

Price Range: $4-$12

Hours: 10 a.m.- 8 p.m. Sunday-Saturday 10675 Northwest Highway, suite 1635 214.221.0903 phohanabi.com

The Advocate typically aims to highlight our neighborhood’s personality by way of narratives, news and profiles, and that will continue — around here, the well of fascinating finds is bottomless. But on the next few pages, numbers, percentages and statistics tell the story of who we are, where we live, what struggles we face.

By Advocate editors

Crime Culture

WE BROKE our neighborhood down to its most simplistic terms: How many we are, by sex and race, our collective education level, our household income and other data drawn from Census data (2010 being the most recent year available) and the American Community Study of 2015. To find these numbers, we pulled from the five zip codes to which the Lake Highlands Advocate covers completely: 75243, 75231, 75238.

122,941

36,602 are foreign-born (29.8% of the neighborhood population)

31.5

29.3% of people age 25 and up living in 75231 do not have a high school diploma, compared to 13.5% in both 75243 and 75238.