Through December 15, 2010-January 17, 2011, Northern Virginia Magazine decided to create a friendly competition called NoVA Wars. During the cold days that lead up to this decision it was obvious that NoVA’s beloved Vietnamese noodle soup called Pho would be the first contender to boil in the New Year. In a Final Four-style bracket the magazine nominated 32 Pho houses across the area to participate in a reader’s poll.

As each day had new Pho houses competing, the loyalties and passion for reader’s favorite Pho place showed like a clip from “Brave Heart”: “…You may take away our lives, but you cannot take away our FREEDOM!”

Such passionate Pho lovers like David Nguyen, Jacqueline Martin, Jamie Jill and Kimia Keshavarz vocalized, not only their opinion on Pho, but their opinion on the polling process and eventually their new found negative opinion about the magazine.

We want to redirect the attention, not to these vocal individuals, the magazine or the polling, but to the area we call home, Northern Virginia, which has embraced the love for this traditional Vietnamese dish and for the past ten-plus years, cultured and brought together people of all origins who have a common love and passion for food. And that was the goal of running a friendly NoVA War contest, to bring people together, and will always be for the months to come.

Questions for you!

• What can we do to improve the polling for the future? What ideas do you have that you’d like to see for the next polling? What do you think worked well and what didn’t?

• What competitions would you like to see in 2011?

• Where’s your favorite place to go eat Pho and Why?