How to eat pho: A Vietnamese food crawl with Jeannie Mai Jenkins
LOS ANGELES — Jeannie Mai Jenkins orders food like she's giving a TED Talk, with total authority, confidence and gumption. Sitting at a table at Pho So 1, a bare-bones restaurant in a strip mall in Van Nuys, she grips the laminated menu and points excitedly to a bowl of pho.
Jenkins, best known as one of the Emmy-winning co-hosts of the daytime talk show "The Real" — which ended its eight-season run earlier this year — has made countless appearances as an energetic red-carpet fashion expert at the Golden Globes and the American Music Awards. But food, she says, is always central to what she does.
She always wanted her own food show, and recently landed her dream job hosting "America's Test Kitchen: The Next Generation," a cooking competition series now streaming on Amazon Freevee.
"I've been starving for an opportunity like this," she says. "To actually be in the realm of food now makes me feel like a dream has finally been accomplished."
10:37 a.m. Pho So 1
The Van Nuys branch of Pho So 1 restaurant, Jenkins' first destination on a three-stop Vietnamese food crawl, is home to her favorite bowl of pho besides her mother's.
"When I moved to L.A.," she says, "the two
