Soup's a delight to the senses and comfort to the belly

The white bowls come out steaming, carried with quiet fanfare and a careful grip. They are the size of sinks, with the depth and heft of Victorian-era wash basins. They're followed by white platters piled with bean sprouts, sprigs of peppery Thai basil, jalapeno slices and limes, and a quartet of condiments -- pickled peppers, chili sauce, sticky hoisin sauce and spicy Sriracha.

Look, it's my job to visit Soup's. But the truth is, I've been sneaking back there on my own time. A lot.

When it gets cold outside, the idea of a blistering bowl of one of Vietnam's culinary gifts to the world pulls me down the street faster than.... Hello, my name is Laura and I'm a pho addict.

Pho -- pronounced fuh -- is a brothy, often beefy soup, thick with slippery noodles. The bean sprouts, Thai basil and such are garnishes that you can use to adjust the soup to your taste. So are the condiments, and for me, they are part of pho's appeal. The combinations mean no two bowls taste exactly alike.

Beef pho is classic, and you'll find that here, in spades. You can order pho with thin sheets of beef between rice noodles, pho with dense meatballs or (very) chewy bits of tendon, or all three. There's pho with fried chicken. There is pho with shrimp and scallops, and vegetarian-friendly pho with tofu, thick udon noodles with shrimp and ham, and pho with ramen egg noodles, sliced pork and small, meaty dumplings.

It is filling and warming, the kind of unfussy dish that's impossible to eat without slurping and sputtering, yet there's something delicate about it, and indeed, much of the food here.

The pho is sly with flavor. Lean over as you drop in your bean sprouts, and maybe you'll catch a whiff of anise. Swirl in some scarlet spots of chili sauce, and the broth takes on a deep spicy-sweetness. Translucent, raw white onions spin on top, dotted with flecks of black pepper.

Recently, Soup's added a smaller size of pho to its menu -- it's still plenty of food. And my only complaint is that there has been some inconsistency in the sliced beef. Sometimes it borders on rare -- delicious -- and sometimes it's cooked through. I'd like a choice.

Soup's is presided over -- owned would not be a strong enough verb -- by Souphab Daoheang. He is an entrepreneurial force, the quintessential small-business owner who seems to spend every waking minute networking and beating a path across Fourth Street as he hops between his two restaurants.

Daoheang's mother is Vietnamese. He escaped from war-torn Laos with his family as a child in 1978 and grew up in Winston-Salem.

At Soup's, he is rarely still, stopping at tables (this is fine), urging people to order pho (also OK -- they should listen) and showing customers how to eat pho (this gets invasive, despite what I'm sure are his good intentions). "Have you ever been here before?" he asked a friend one day during lunch, then grabbed her spoon and stirred her noodles for her.

"Have you been here before?" I heard him ask another table. "You won't regret it."

I wish that he'd let the food speak for itself. I'm listening (and slurping).

Daoheang opened Soup's last year after he moved his first restaurant, Downtown Thai, across the street into the new One Park Vista building (and added sushi to that menu).

Soup's doesn't look much different from the old Downtown Thai -- the walls are still a flashy combination of apple-green paint and mirrors, with generic jazz playing over the sound system. Atmosphere is not really why you come here.

Noodles are. Other entrees are equally noodle-heavy. There are crispy egg noodles, and bun cha gro, a combination of fried chicken, spicy pork meatballs (good, but we bite into cartilage or bone one too many times) and slices of spring rolls, a fried feast spread out on lettuce and two types of rice noodles, one thin, another as fine as hair.

Even the curry comes with noodles, a bowl of potatoes, carrots and the protein of your choosing (lean beef slices are good) that you dump over a bowl of rice noodles, lettuce and bean sprouts. It's not unlike Thai or Indian curries -- lighter, less creamy, soupier, if you will, but the taste reminds me of a cinnamony Massaman curry.

Fried quail is noodle-less, but its crisp skin is slicked with a sweet and sour tamarind sauce. That didn't cover up that it was dry.

Egg rolls and summer rolls head up the appetizer choices; better are the fried "dancing" shrimp, or a salad of shredded and sliced carrots, cucumbers, sliced pork and shrimp dressed with a vinegar sauce. The salad is enough for a light meal, and the play of puckery vinegar dressing against tender cold shrimp is refreshing.

For dessert, strong, sweet Vietnamese coffee is a must. Steamed coconut puddings are a light partner, springy, and not too sugary.

If Soup's served banh mi, I'd be in real trouble. I'd be as addicted to a good version of those cool, crunchy Vietnamese sandwiches in the summer as I am to bowls of noodles and broth in the winter.