By Tim Carman 

The No. 1 pho bowl — with slices of eye of round, well-done flank, fat brisket, tendon and tripe — with garnishes at Pho Real in Silver Spring. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)

Location can influence your restaurant selection as much as chef pedigree, and I’m not just talking about the human tendency to dine close to home.

To prove my point, allow me to pose a leading question: If you were jonesing for Vietnamese pho — a big bowl of beef broth fragrant with star anise and loaded with eye round and fatty brisket — where would you go for the noodle soup: the Eden Center in Falls Church or the Briggs Chaney Center in Montgomery County?

Don’t be a tool. If those were your only options, of course you’d pick the Eden Center, home to a dense cluster of eateries that cater to Vietnamese immigrants and their children (and, by now, their children’s children).

[Nha Trang, vibrant Vietnamese cuisine in Eden Center]

It’s a no-brainer to visit a spot that attracts the immigration population behind your desired food, right? Your odds of finding decent pho is far greater at the Eden Center than at some random strip center hunkered down in the northern wilds of Silver Spring. But for every common-sense rule, there is an exception. Like Pho Real, a small, pale-pink shop located in the Briggs Chaney Center, home to an international buffet of restaurants that hawk dishes as diverse as Peruvian chicken, Mexican tacos, Sichuan stir-fries and Jamaican jerk chicken.

Hoang and Ann Nguyen fled Vietnam in 1978 as part of that flotilla of refugees called the “boat people,” and they prospered here in other fields before opening Pho Real in 2005. For years, Ann’s late mother, Thanh Huong Nguyen, had urged her daughter to open a restaurant in America, just as the elder had done in Vietnam. Once Hoang and Ann’s children were old enough to help run a business, the couple decided to act on the matriarch’s advice.

One of Pho Real’s many pho variations is a vegetarian broth with broccoli, bok choy and tofu. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)

Let’s just say it now: Mother knows best.

Unlike her mom’s fine-dining restaurant back in Dalat, that tourist oasis in the Vietnamese south-central highlands, Ann and her husband focus mostly on pho. “If we concentrate on one thing on the menu, then we can do it so much better than if we have 200 dishes,” Hoang says by way of explanation.

The family’s dedication was clear from the first slurp of my beef pho stocked with well-done flank, fatty brisket, tendon, stomach tripe and eye round (which I ordered rare, so I could monitor the rosy-red slices as they slowly browned in the steaming broth). The soup had a viscous body, which made me think the kitchen knows how to pick bones. As in, Ann and Hoang select good, gelatin-rich joint bones, essential for this kind of luxuriant broth.

But more than that, the soup’s flavor was not some repetitive, single-note, Steve Reich tribute to star anise. This broth had balance. I could actually taste the charred onions and charred ginger, two of pho’s major building blocks; their radiant sweetness seemed to surround the soup’s aromatics, not surrender to them.

This is the type of pho that demands a cautious use of tabletop garnishes and sauces. To hose down this broth with Sriracha and hoisin would be like defacing public art. I ordered beef soup multiple times at Pho Real, and each time I searched for an appropriate way to accent the broth without obliterating it. Too much Thai basil and jalapeno turned the liquid an alien green. Too much hot sauce and hoisin threatened to alter the soup’s very nature: I was soon slurping down condiment pho. Even adding too much nuoc beo, or rendered fat with spring onions, started to overwhelm the bowl with richness.

In the end, I decided Pho Real’s beef soup needs little assistance. I merely added two or three leaves of basil, a single ringlet of jalapeno, a long squirt of lime and a handful of bean sprouts and lightly vinegared onions (which cost an extra $.99), and my pho sang with clarity and beauty. The lime added just enough acidity to brighten the broth, while the vinegared onions and sprouts gave it texture. The rice noodles, long and relatively flat, absorbed the broth’s flavors as easily as dry earth soaks up summer rain.

The lone drawback? Some of the beef, like the well-done flank, cried out for stronger flavors to boost its plodding meatiness. Which is why I jury-rigged a sauce using the saucer that held my soup spoon: Into the small vessel, I dumped Sriracha, hoisin and fish sauce, then cut the concoction with a small spoonful of pho broth. Voila, I had a dipping station right on the table, a more-than-passable preparation for meat enrichment. I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself — until I looked up and saw a fellow diner doing essentially the same thing.

A cool sour sop smoothie with bubbles. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)

Pho Real’s fried spring rolls, stuffed with shrimp and pork, are worth checking out. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)

Like the better-known Pho 75, Pho Real offers little more than rolls, drinks and many different pho variations, including chicken and vegetarian broths made in-house. The chicken pho is as clear as spring water, light, fragrant but ultimately lacking depth. The summer rolls, both the shrimp-pork and tofu preparations, come packed with too much watery lettuce, leaving you with a rather vapid bite. The fried spring rolls, however, are virtually greaseless and gutbucket good. The smoothies and Thai teas fare better without tapioca pearls, which have the texture of children’s chewable vitamins.

The menu may lack diversity, but the dining room does not. This spare-but-cheerful space, outfitted with artwork both purchased and handmade by Hoang, attracts perhaps the most diverse group of diners I’ve seen in a pho parlor. Latinos, whites, Asians, blacks, young, old, even one grizzled dude in an Xtreme Couture T-shirt. The customer base, in fact, may be a small confirmation of a belief that Hoang and Ann formulated more than a decade ago.

“We believe pho is going to be big in this country,” Hoang told me, “just as big as hamburgers and pizza.”