This is my first blog post about food. Ever. Considering how much I love eating, this is astonishing. So why have I never written about food? To be honest, I’m a little intimidated by food bloggers. Really, when it comes down to it, I’m just not a food snob. (Macky is rolling his eyes right now but I would argue that falling short of “human-garbage-disposal” does not a food snob make.) I love fresh, delicious food just as much as the next person, but I can’t get riled up over fancy restaurants that leave me broke and still hungry. What I really love is CHEAP fresh, delicious food, preferably in generous quantities. For this, I am able to overlook any number of flaws. Terrible service? I call it character. Several inches of dust gathering on the countertops? Ambience. Sketchy neighborhood? Whatever, just feed me and I’m happy. If you’re the kind of person who gets bent out of shape over these details, maybe don’t take my recommendations. For the rest of you, I’ll be posting occasional reviews of my favorite kind of restaurants, the ones where you can happily overeat for under 10 dollars.

I’m going to start you out with an easy one: The Noodle Bar, located in Seaside, CA. By easy, I mean there is really nothing to complain about. It’s clean. The service is lightning fast, especially when you consider that there are approximately eight seats to accommodate hordes of hungry, noodle-crazed patrons who are practically beating down the door. And, as if all that weren’t great enough, seven dollars gets you a gigantic, horse-sized bowl of Vietnamese pho. It’s greasy. It’s spicy. It makes your nose run. It is everything that noodles should be.

I would like to say that I discovered The Noodle Bar, but as you can see from this photo, which was taken on a Monday night, that is patently not the case. However, we did trek all the way to Seaside, in the dark, in the cold (50 degrees is cold in California), for the sole purpose of eating noodles in a strip mall. I think that should count for something.

I’m not a pho expert, although after this meal I definitely plan on becoming one. In fact, even though I am the world’s biggest noodle fan, I had never heard of pho before moving to California. Dear Rest-of-America, you are missing out.

Okay, the spring rolls might put you slightly over 10 dollars, but not if you split an order with someone else. And yeah, we ordered vegetarian ones and ended up with pork, but it was still delicious and as I mentioned before, I can’t really get fussed over things like that. Besides, my sort-of vegetarianism always falls apart when confronted with Asian food. (There was rare beef in my pho and it was awesome.) We will be coming back to the Noodle Bar, for sure.