Bún Bò Huế Kim Long

Anthony Bourdain's verdict on bún bò Huế was not a hedge: in his opinion, it is the greatest soup in the world. He said it in Vietnam's old imperial capital, at a bowl shop in the Kim Long ward, and Parts Unknown built an entire hour around that trip, carrying him on through Đông Ba Market, a fishing village and imperial court cooking in a private home.

Everything that separates this bowl from pho is in the broth and the noodles. Beef bones go into the pot with lemongrass, fermented shrimp paste and chilli oil, and the stock is left to reduce until it tastes like an argument won slowly. The noodles are round and thick rather than flat and silk-thin, and they come with beef shank, pig's trotter and, depending on the kitchen, crab meat balls. It is a soup with a temper: the shrimp paste is unapologetically funky, the chilli oil leaves a heat that arrives late, and the lemongrass keeps the whole bowl from turning heavy.

In Huế this is a morning dish, which is why these shops fill long before noon and thin out after it. Order the bowl with a plate of banana flower salad — the raw crunch of the flower, dressed with fish sauce and herbs, is the relief the soup is asking for — and add the herbs and lime at the table rather than at the counter, because the bowl is meant to be tuned as you eat. Vietnamese iced coffee or a cold beer finishes it properly.

What makes the address worth remembering is that Bourdain's favourite soup is served in a working neighbourhood rather than a dining room, which was the argument of the whole episode. The show moves between that market stall, a private home and the city's twentieth-century history, then returns to a bowl of soup, and the bowl is what survives the rewatch. Come for the dish first and the pilgrimage second; Kim Long does not perform for visitors, and that is exactly why it holds up.