Good Phortune At People’s Soup in Blue Hill, restauranteur makes sure the chill doesn’t last long

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Cris Fernandez opened the rime-coated glass door of People’s Soup in Blue Hill and walked inside with his 3-year-old daughter, Nadya, in tow. They were bundled against the weather on this nostril-freezing day, and every time the door opened, a puff of steam escaped into the frigid, dry air outside.

Fernandez, 37, lives in Brooklin, and he’s a regular. The day before, he had ordered a wrap to go at lunchtime. But a day like this, when the temperature doesn’t crack zero, calls for something warm. And at People’s Soup, that something is Pho.

For the uninitiated, Pho, pronounced “foe,” is a Vietnamese specialty. It consists of a big bowl of aromatic broth and rice noodles, topped with fresh vegetables and thin slices of chicken, beef or tofu, and served with a side of raw bean sprouts, basil leaves, limes, pickled hot chili peppers and – for the adventurous, a spicy peanut sauce.

For the initiated, it’s heaven in a bowl.

“I like the combination of the fresh and cooked foods and the broth,” Fernandez said. “Especially on these zero-degree days, a nice bowl of hot Pho is good for the body and the soul.”

That’s what Ken Maccarone, 53, had in mind when he opened People’s Soup last fall.

“It’s entertainment,” he said. “It’s more than just dinner. If you slurp, you can use all five senses with your dinner here.”

A native New Yorker and longtime Cape Cod restaurateur, Maccarone moved to Blue Hill seven years ago to be closer to his wife’s family. Since then, he has worked in restaurant kitchens all over town and until recently ran Ovenworks Pizza before turning the business over to his daughter and son-in-law, Emily and Peter Voigt.

For the newlyweds, the prospect of making dough and sauces from scratch, not to mention the time commitment of running a business, proved to be stressful.

“They elected to make babies and have dogs and have a life,” Maccarone said, laughing.

So he took over the lease and decided to try something new. Well, new to Blue Hill, but not particularly new to Maccarone. For years, he and his restaurant buddies would travel to Chinatown in Boston, in part to eat, and in part to buy packages of ingredients they had never heard of.

“We’d sniff it, feel it, taste it and figure out what the hell we were going to do with it,” he said with a smile. “On those trips, we started going to Pho places. The soup just really got me. It grabbed me hard. It’s great stuff.”

During those trips, he would ask questions and slurp carefully, trying to discern the spices and flavors that made the broth so rich. Over time, he created his own version of Pho, which he tested on his kids.

“Tastebuds are tastebuds,” he said. “If something tastes good, something tastes good. If something’s an acquired taste, then that’s not something I’m interested in.”

His recipe, which features a richer broth than what you’d find in Chinatown, proved to be a hit with his family, so he chose to build the menu around that. He also offers hot entrees, sandwiches on homemade focaccia, salads and wraps.

“We get a lot of construction and carpentry workers, and they might not always want rice noodles,” Maccarone’s daughter Emily said. “Sometimes they need something a little heftier.”

Emily now works for her father, a situation that she enjoys much more than running her own restaurant. It gives her more family time. Plus, she’s still able to work with her dad.

“My son will be here in 20 minutes,” Emily, 28, said after she popped a beef curry in the oven. “We’re only open four days a week. It keeps everyone happy.”

Especially the hungry people. Just ask Terry Frank, a DJ from Penobscot who polished off a big bowl of Pho.

“The food is bangin’,” Frank, 43, said, smiling. “It takes me back to a Vietnamese restaurant I used to eat at in Boston.”

A Louisiana native, Frank likes the fact that he can get the soup as spicy as he wants it. His partner, Carla Delaney, 27, likes the idea of a flavorful vegetarian meal. She was raised on a macrobiotic diet and was a vegan for years, and says it’s hard to find tasty options within those parameters.

“I’m not vegetarian anymore, but I still like to eat vegetarian,” she said.

The couple’s 3-year-old son, Solomon, is more of a wrap kind of guy.

“He likes tofu,” Frank said. “The spicy peanut sauce? Not so much.”

Solomon would rather play with Pho than eat it, but his parents seemed content as they sat in a sunny spot by the window, smiling at their empty bowls.

“On a bone-chillin’ day like today, soup is what your body is asking for,” Frank said.

And in Blue Hill, Pho is the answer.

People’s Soup is located at 37 Water St. in Blue Hill. Hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday-Friday. For information, call 374-5775.