Woodbury Restaurant Guide

Thanh Truc is hidden in the back of a strip mall near Woodbury Drive and Valley Creek Road, surrounded by pricey town homes that all look alike. The name is Vietnamese for green bamboo, and there's a green bamboo plant growing on every table. Green paper lanterns hang from the ceiling and framed photos of Vietnam adorn the walls. Water comes with a slice of lemon, and an entire page of the menu is devoted to tea.

With most Vietnamese restaurants, the litmus test for quality is the pho, a beef noodle soup, pronounced something like fuh. And Thanh Truc's is the best around. With the first sip, you can immediately tell that the kitchen puts a lot of work into the intensely flavorful broth filled with slippery rice noodles and paper-thin slices of beef.

To eat it, you have to think like a chef, with chopsticks in one hand and a spoon in the other, alternately slurping soup and adjusting the broth with a squeeze of lime, a squirt of hot sauce, and tossing in fresh basil, bean sprouts or sliced fresh green chilies.

The shrimp wonton soup is also superb, a delicate broth with crunchy vegetables and plenty of dumplings stuffed with minced shrimp and pork bobbing around like buoys.