I have a theory that a metropolitan jurisdiction cannot in good faith call itself a city unless there's a place to get a good bowl of pho (pronounced "foe").

WHAT IS IT?

At its most basic, pho is a spicy Vietnamese soup made with beef, noodles and all sorts of vegetables. The exact ingredients vary somewhat from restaurant to restaurant but they usually include bean sprouts, lemon grass, chilies, onions, green onions, cilantro, mint and lemon with spicy fish sauce on the side. The best bowls I've had let you put in the sprouts and the mint yourself to make sure they're fresh. There's nothing quite like biting into crunchy bean sprouts after a bite of soggy noodles and beef.

THE HUNT BEGINS

With that in mind, I set out a month or so ago to see whether Roanoke was a bona fide city. It was a chilly morning, the perfect time to sit at a little deli and slurp up a steaming bowl of pho. I've never been to Vietnam but I've read and heard that pho is ubiquitous over there, kind of like Vietnamese fast food.

ON WILLIAMSON ROAD?

I headed up Williamson Road and pulled into the parking lot outside the Fresh Oriental Market at 2501 Williamson Road, thinking that somebody there would be able to help me out. Inside, two men were sitting on crates, smoking cigarettes and playing cards. There seemed to be no other customers inside. I asked about pho and they nodded and started walking toward the back of the store. All the pho fixings were behind a glass refrigerator, waiting to be thrown in a big pot of boiling broth.

But they had no ready-made pho. I briefly considered trying to make a pot from scratch but they said it was extremely difficult to do and would take about three hours. Online recipes later backed them up, calling for complicated tricks like straining broth through cheesecloth.

THE THAI RESTAURANT?

Before I left, however, they told me to try the Thai Restaurant downtown. When I did, I was not exactly blown away. It was a serviceable bowl, but kind of bland. Definitely not good enough to make me come back.

A-HA!

Just as I was beginning to despair, I saw the words "pho soup" scrawled on a dry-erase board at the Hong Kong Restaurant in the Roanoke City Market building.

I ordered a bowl. I was hooked. Their pho could scarcely be further from the pho I'm used to, but was it ever good. Min Shao, the chef at the Hong Kong Restaurant, throws in celery, carrots, lots of lemon grass, rice cooking wine and a Chinese cabbage called napa on top of the noodles, beef and bean sprouts.

But what really makes the soup is the lemon grass, he said in Chinese as his daughter, Runan Shao, translated.

Min Shao has run the restaurant for the past couple of years after moving down from Fairfax. Although he's Chinese, he decided to leave pho on the menu after he took the restaurant over from its Vietnamese owner, but decided to give it his own twist, his daughter said.

Pho purists would probably scoff at Min Shao's take on the Vietnamese standby, but that doesn't mean it isn't a terrific spicy soup. Sometimes it's so full of vegetables, noodles and beef that it can hardly be called a soup. And portions are big enough to last a couple of days.

Min Shao's pho is one of very few options around here and it's unlike anything you ever expected. So what does that say about Roanoke's urban authenticity?

I've heard there's a Vietnamese restaurant in Blacksburg. Maybe they have a good traditional bowl of pho. Maybe Blacksburg is a real American city. Or maybe my theory's totally bogus.