Chicken pho at the Starbucks headquarters sounds like a sentence constructed to bother people, and yet Vuong Loc, Executive Chef at SODO Kitchen inside Starbucks HQ in Seattle, cooked a chicken pho that won. The institutional context is irrelevant to the bowl. The bowl is the argument.
His broth ran six hours with charred onion and ginger — both halved and placed cut-side-down directly over a gas flame until blackened, which produces Maillard compounds that give pho its characteristic depth without muddying the color. He skimmed continuously for the first ninety minutes to keep the broth clear, then brought it to a full boil at the end to clarify through convection. The spices — star anise, cloves, cinnamon, coriander seed — were toasted dry before adding to the broth at the four-hour mark.
Bobby's pho broth, judges noted, lacked the depth of a properly charred base. You cannot shortcut six hours. The Starbucks clock runs the same as everyone else's.