Ha Ha

But without fail, they always run out of soup too soon. Weekends you're guaranteed to be out of luck by noon. 

Well, now you just have to wait until 4 pm. 

Founding Ha & VL owners Ha “Christina” Luu and William Vuong passed off their Southeast 82nd Avenue soup spot to Christina’s son Peter a few years back, but they’ve come out of retirement to open Rose VL, a Southeast Powell Boulevard installment that—for now—is a lot like an intensely friendly, scrambled-up version of the original. 

Instead of soup for breakfast, it's dinner (all $9.50). And instead of Saturday, their signature pork pepper balls show up on Friday. Turmeric noodles, meanwhile, have been bumped from Sunday to Saturday.

But the new spot is also intended to give Luu a little room to play. And so the occasional lucky customers will get options on hearty Vietnamese stews—though I've not seen them yet—and on a recent Monday, Luu swapped out her fish noodle soup for a take on Thai-spot mainstay tom yum.

It was plush heaven, floral and delicate and restrained—a far cry from the usual amped-up lemongrass-galangal flavor bomb—its tomatoes lightly cooking richness into the heat of the broth. This delicacy and brightness is Luu's trademark in all her soups. Just as Vuong meticulously blends four different local coffee beans to make his Vietnamese coffee just so, Luu's soups don't announce themselves loudly but rather whisper their way across the palate. The fullness of flavor comes not from intensity but that rarest of things, balance. They are like no others in town. 

Although as it matured in the bowl—with cuts of flank leaching thickly into the broth—the spicy beef noodle on the same day likewise deepened into a hearthlike warmth. I didn't go as much for Monday's fishcake—sure, it's a little wharfy for a Western palate. But what I enjoy most about the VLs is that the Western palate isn't even in consideration. Nothing is oversweetened, nothing overspiced or -salted.

"I made the best one just for you," Luu said as she handed soup across—too late in the evening for it even to be courteous of me to place the order. I bet she says it to everyone, but I believed her.

Order this: Fish noodle (or tom yum) Monday, bamboo shoots chicken noodle Wednesday, crab flakes noodle Thursday, peppery pork ball Friday, Vietnamese turmeric noodle Saturday, VL special noodle Sunday.

EAT: Rose VL, 6424 SE Powell Blvd., 206-4344. 4-9 pm Wednesday-Monday.

WWeek 2015