Dinner at Pho Pasteur was all about essential liquids. Pho is the essence of beef, with crunchy basil and bean sprouts and chewy bits of meat, noodles, tripe; Vietnamese iced coffee is the essence of the coffee bean, admixed with supersweet condensed milk (itself the essence of dairy); and water is the essential element, if we're to believe the Greek poet Pindar and a certain school of the Presocratic philosophers. I slurp, I sip, I swig. Slurp, sip, swig, until each container has been emptied and my belly is full, my mind is racing, and my lips are aflame with the chili sauce I apply to my soup with gleeful overgenerosity.

I'm eating at the bar, which is a nice place for a party of one to dine without feeling like, well, a party of one. A couple is sitting a couple of chairs down from me, a man and a woman. The man asks the server behind the counter for duck sauce. "Duck sauce?" she asks him, trying to sound confused and not horrified. Duck sauce is for ramshackle chop suey joints at Salem Willows specializing in deep fried chicken thumbs, not the Francophile culinary traditions of Vietnam. Duck sauce? The server looks about ready to slap the man across the face. "Fish sauce!" he cries out, as if this were a game show of some sort and the buzzer was just about to sound. The server smiles and produces the proper condiment; the man smiles back, in obvious relief.

I go back to minding my own business. Slurp. Sip. Swig.