“By 6:30 in the evening, the dining room at Pho Cyclo in Capitol Hill is loaded with customers. They are crammed into the booths along the walls, pressed up against the glass of the Broadway side windows that fog with the steam coming off their bowls of pho. Arriving parties tangle with departing ones at the door, and there seems to be very little in the way of organization on the floor. Servers seat people at random–pointing them in the direction of tables, sometimes forgetting menus, sometimes forgetting utensils, sometimes forgetting people altogether as they work through a backlog of parties that never seems to slacken. There are no quiet moments here, only those that are less busy, and those that are more.The servers seem not to notice. They move (or don’t) at the same languorous pace regardless. They bring menus (or don’t), chopsticks (or not), and sheets of seasonal specials which seem to have no relation to the season. BBQ short ribs, if they had a season, would be a summer thing, wouldn’t they? And I didn’t know there was a special time of the year for chow mein at all.If you are lucky, you might ride a wave of sudden, whiplash seatings straight from the door to the table and be eating in minutes: your order taken, processed and filled in accordance with no rational, decipherable timetable, with no rule except that pho will always come fastest–sometimes before drinks, napkins, chopsticks and pho spoons. If you are not lucky, you may linger, feeling forgotten, by the door and hostess stand, cold drafts on your back, until some server or another registers your presence. You may get a table and then wait, hungry, for 10 or 20 minutes, as tables seated after you are serviced with an efficiency that seems almost insulting, as though keyed specifically to drive you insane.”From this week’s review of Pho Cyclo on Broadway and meditation on the pain of waiting.Dining at Pho Cyclo can be tough. There are complications that begin, for the regular diner, with the sure knowledge that no meal there will be as easy as it should be and the understanding that it is still worth going, if only for that first, hot sip of pho broth or (if you’re me) for the meatballs. The kitchen at Pho Cyclo makes some mean pork meatballs. If forced, I could live on them (plus beer) quite contentedly for quite some time.This week’s review takes into account both sides of the Pho Cyclo coin–both the pain of waiting and the pleasure of finally being given what you came for. It is as much about the planning for a meal at Pho Cyclo as it is about the actual eating of said meal. It is, more than anything, about desire trumping difficulty every time.And you can read all about it tomorrow, either in the papers (available wherever fine newspapers are given away free) or right here at seattleweekly.com.