In Houston, which boasts the third largest Vietnamese population in the country, you can find noodle shops so good they run out of pho before lunch. Pho Binh is—just ahead of Pho Danh II—our panel’s favorite, especially from the trailer location. You heard us right. That trailer on Beamer slightly bests the other four locations (although the Beechnut location has better rice plates); Pho Binh by Night provides a welcome 2am option in Bellaire Chinatown, but its pho is just really, really good instead of stupendously, eye-rollingly good. Oh well. Typically, they’re situated in rather plain and beaten-down shopping centers with a non-descript mess of tables and chairs inside.

This pho is a penetrating potion of profoundly developed flavors of beef bones intertwined with twists of sweet onion, ratcheted up with slips of hard spices like star anise and clove. We like to order ours with fatty brisket, crunchy tripe for extra texture, and rare eye-round on the side. The noodles are ideally toothsome and not overcooked, like seemingly everywhere else.

Other items aren’t bad, either, like plates of fluffy crushed rice and aggressively flavored, but overcooked meat (again, not as much on Beechnut). You can skip the starters such as unexceptional fried Vietnamese egg rolls. In fact, skip it all and go right for the pho.