I love pho. If you told me I could only eat one meal for the rest of my life, it probably wouldn’t be pho, since I wouldn’t want to wear out the almost spiritual connection I have with the dish. For me, a light bowl of pho tai, paired with a hot spring roll, encapsulates a peaceful summer day with no responsibilities, no thoughts, and lots of sleep. Sitting down to a good bowl of pho is the equivalent of a cat finding a warm spot on a windowsill and lazily drowsing throughout the afternoon.
Recently, realizing I’d been to more pho places than several of my friends combined, I took on the joyful burden of cataloguing the culinary pursuits of the pho-serving Vietnamese restaurants I’d visited across the lower mainland.
Disclaimers:
- I only tried the Pho Tai at all of these restaurants - and for more than half, their spring roles - so if a location I rank poorly has the best lemongrass chicken the lower mainland has ever tasted, bully for them.
- I’m not ranking based on authenticity. In general, better pho that’s lighter, less pungent, and made with fresher ingredients is likely more authentic, but I haven’t been to Vietnam. I also like to drown my pho in hoisin sauce - too bad there isn’t a comments section on this website for you to complain.
For the Sweaty Readers
If you find yourself gassed up enough to send me an email railing against my phommentary, then you’d best be sure to include a restaurant recommendation that I can bus or bike to.
Pho Goodness (Main St.)
On a hot August afternoon, I finished helping three of my girlfriends move from their pad in Britannia into an apartment near Ontario and 16th, and into a basement suite near Cambie and 20th. We’d successfully stuffed a U-Haul with all of their belongings; including several standing lamps, a guitar amp, two box springs, and a heavy glass-framed painting of a lion, and had subsequently unloaded it all - working our way down a narrow flight of stairs to the basement, and up a couple flights of stairs and past some pesky fire doors in the apartment. As a celebration of a successful moving day, we headed to Pho Goodness on Main Street to chow down.
7/10 - Pho Goodness makes a mean spring roll, and a solid Pho Tai. The portions aren’t huge, but that isn’t surprising given it’s hip location - and the prices are fair enough. The service is quick - especially considering we’d just seen a gentleman sitting across from us dine and dash ten minutes after sitting down - much to the chagrin of the staff.
Pho With Us
A friend living on campus graciously offered to take me out for my birthday. On a cold November evening, we sat down, ordered, and had our food come almost instantly - a sign I find suspicious in any restaurant, even conceding that normally, pho comes pretty quickly. I’ll say this - having a new pho place open at UBC was great. In fact, I’m pretty sure that was the only Vietnamese place on campus. If only it was any good.
3/10 - The fact that I wouldn’t go back, even considering it’s the only pho place on campus (not counting the pop-up Pho Goodness in ICICICICICICS) says a lot. There were huge clumps of chewy noodles, barely giving space for any of the dishwater broth to soak up the flavors of the hoisin or siracha. The beef slices were tough and too thick. I could barely finish half of the bowl, partially due to it’s massive size.
Pho 99 (New West)
One Sunday, I leisurely woke up at 1PM and opened my window to the soft early afternoon light of fall. It was one of the first days with the chill of autumn on the wind - warm enough to go outside in a t-shirt and shorts, but brisk and bracing, a reminder to enjoy the few weeks that were the golden hour of the year. I packed my e-reader and laptop, and jumped on my bike, following the route below the expo line down past Metrotown to New Westminster. The leaves on the trees were on fire, and it was down hill all the way.
9/10 - On a Sunday at 2PM, the restaurant was about a quarter full, meaning I could choose a private high-backed booth. The place embodied a delicate stillness, helped along by the light anime piano music that was playing in the background, which I did notice began repeating after the first twenty minutes. The service was unremarkable in the best possible way - quiet and fast, with prices to match (no deals, but nothing to break the bank). The pho portion was large, with a good amount of beef. The spring rolls elevated the experience - perfectly crunchy without any deep-fried oily-ness.
Pho Express Ankor Noodle House
On a Saturday night - never mind how long precisely - having little or not money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. Which is to say, I decided to get a little turntina and bike around the city. Wanting to head along the Ontario bike route by science world, but needing a destination to rest before heading back home, I decided to find a late-night pho place downtown.
5/10 - The stale-tasting soup likely wasn’t helped by ordering with 30 minutes to spare before closing. Sappy covers of pop songs played at a volume slightly too loud to successfully ignore (I’m sorry, but I don’t want hear a ballad-esque cover of Shape of You while I’m munching). However, for downtown, it was clean, not expensive (though not cheap), and I appreciated that it was open late.
Pho 68 (King George)
If you’re going to the Surrey HIVE and want a hearty meal after a long session, this is the place to go. King George station is one of those weird liminal Skytrain development areas like Marine Gateway and Brentwood - there’s one or two good places to eat, a gaggle of glass-shard skyscrapers, and then, as soon as you get five minutes away from the periphery, nothing but highways and car dealerships. Good thing they’ve got a solid pho place to keep everyone from offing themselves.
8/10 - With respectable spring rolls and huge pho portions (including beef slices to match), there isn’t much to not like about Pho 68. We easily fit almost 10 people around two tables, with the rest of the restaurant almost empty, so it’s a good place to head to with a big group of friends. Considering it’s a couple expo stops away from the Surrey HIVE, what’s not to love?
Pho 37 (Richmond)
Each time my friend and I parked near Pho 37 on our way to the Aberdeen mall food court, we’d always walk by, glance inside, and remark on how we should go there someday. Of course, there is no later - he went to Toronto to intern for the summer, and, the weekend before Solar (my design team) kicked into high gear before competition, I decided to give the place a try.
Arriving mid-afternoon on a weekend, the place was packed, and it’s not a small restaurant. The high ceilings and multitude of elegant chandeliers made it feel more like one of those fancy seafood restaurants. At the far end of the restaurant, there was a tall, curved wall of all glass, which made the space feel open and elevated. As a single diner, it would’ve been hard to find a spot, it not for the two-seater table right next to the entrance (which, I’d guess, was normally for guests waiting for a table).
6/10 - The price brought this one down from an 8/10. The quality of the small bowl of Pho I got was good - very fresh, and the spring rolls held their own, but for what you’re getting, you’re obviously paying off all the crystal light fixtures they invested in.
The experience was made more memorable by an extremely cute waiter, for whom I did indeed leave my number on a piece of paper, and for whom I did indeed not receive any message from. Being a woman of decorum, I decided not to bump up my rating based on staff attractiveness.
Pho Hong
My Pho Hong cherry was popped after Contact 2023. After getting out at midnight, I was mentally still in the depths of the Vancouver Convention Center having my back blown out by Rezz, the sober (in spirit) members of our group coordinated rides Ubers down to Burnaby to get our post-rave munchies on. Apart from the incredibly packed restaurant (where, I realized, all the Asian rave groups rushed to after the function), I remember that December 27th night being the one warm night (17 degrees!) that winter. Truly, a Christmas miracle.
5/10: Too stinky! The broth smelled, and looked, like it’d been marinated with a whole cow for several days. Also, as one of the two late night pho places around, it will be packed - prepare to have to stick your leg out to snag the waiter. That said, one time a group of us went, they were running extremely behind, but when we said we needed to get our food in the next twenty minutes, they surely did serve us and bill us extremely quickly.
Of course, the first time I went, I was overjoyed to get hot soup into my stomach after three hours of hardcore dancing, and didn’t notice the taste. Moral of the story - you’ll get great value if you’re not sober.
Bun Cha Ca Hoang Yen
It was three days after getting all four of my wisdom teeth yanked, and I was jonesing for some proper hot, flavorful food. Fortunately, I met up with two of my friends, who not only recommended one of the best pho places I’ve tried, but were gracious enough to sit through me gumming my way through a large bowl of soup.
Around those two blocks of Victoria drive, there’s probably about 300 pho and banh mi restaurants, so you know that their offerings have to be fierce in order to beat the competition. The friend who recommended it to me said it was his go-to pho location. Walking into the restaurant, you’re met with lively, loud chatter from busy tables, along with a spot to sit, no matter how busy it seems at first glance. I headed there around dinner time with six friends after a day climbing in Squamish, and despite it being pretty packed, we were instantly seated.
9/10 - The pho tai was the star of the show, hands down. However, even with the big portions, delicate beef slices, and noodles that were just the right tenderness, it was almost upstaged by the piping hot spring rolls I ordered the second time I went (and made the mistake of sharing with my hungry friends).
Anh and Chi
I’ve got two words - white people. White people love this shit - they eat it up, so it’s no surprise that this restaurant is highly rated on google maps, and there’s almost always a twenty to forty minute wait. You’ll notice that at every single other pho restaurant, we were instantly seated. Even after the entire music festival made its way down to Pho Hong after Contact, our group of 8 people was still able to get a table.
It’s got a cool interior that was definitely crafted by an expensive design firm - individual candles bringing out the warmth in the wood paneling. There were some great tiles behind the bar which I wanted to steal for my bathroom. Hip hip hip, just like its location in busy main street (not too far from Pho Goodness).
2/10 - The wait and the price, are what make Anh and Chi a 2/10. Taste-wise, it’s not what my mouth expected. It was too full of flavors that didn’t belong in pho - which is what the Vietnamese vacationer purists probably think of my Canadian pho choices. Was it a solid soup? Yes. Was it good pho? No.
When we got our food, we were brought little saucers of hoisin sauce and siracha. “Could I get the hoisin sauce bottle” I asked the waitress, having recently picked up the technique of squirting hoisin directly into a spoonful of pho, along with mixing it in with the main bowl of soup. The young skinny white waitress looked at me for a beat with a servers smile on her face, and then, sufficiently recovered, said, “the whole bottle?!”, unable to control an incredulous laugh. “Yes,” I deadpanned, and, flustered, and thinking of how she’d sell this story to her co-workers, compromised by bringing me another small saucer of hoisin.
Pho T&T
After returning from Solar competition in Kentucky, I was extraordinarily bored at home. So, in the spirit of summer, I millennium-lined out half way to Coquitlam, and then biked the rest of the way to Pho T&T. It was a gorgeous summer day, with a cool breeze that was enough to cut through the sweat of my bike ride.
7/10 - Good pho, good spring rolls, and very, very quiet. A great place to relax, eat, and read a book if you’ve got a couple hours to kill. I honestly don’t remember much, other than being so full I wasn’t sure if I could ride my bike back to the train station afterward.
Pho Lan
On a dark, cold evening in early December, the feeling of being trapped in my house studying for hours a day finally came to a head, and I decided to venture out to Richmond to find a late night location to do some work.
I rode the train all the way to the end of the line, hopping off at Richmond Center feeling hungry and excited to be outside. This was one of the first times I’d been in Richmond after dark on foot, and I was astonished by the scale of the new lit-up glass buildings that surrounded the station. I walked down the street for a couple minutes, peering into restaurants to find a place that didn’t look too fancy, too empty, or too full - signs I’ve learned to stray away from as a solo muncher.
Stepping into Pho Lan was like stepping into the house of your Vietnamese auntie who immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. The tables felt like those you’d find in a well-used dining room, and the counter at the back was framed with small wooden bannisters, which, as a child of Vancouver Specials, made me feel right at home.
8/10 - Free wifi, quick customer turnover, and a scattering of outlets made this the perfect place to work uninterrupted for around two hours. Combine that with a steaming hot bowl of pho tai, respectable springroles, and a fair price, and you’ve got all that you could ask for in a late-night study spot.
Pho Quynh Express
If you’re heading out from the HIVE Vancouver after a long session, especially if you’re with a big group that went for the half-off student deal on the first Monday of every month, and want a quick meal before the UBC people catch the 84 outside MEC, then there’s no better place - actually, no other place - to head to than Pho Quynh Express.
5/10 - The broth wasn’t as flavorful as I would’ve liked, and my friends agreed that the bean sprouts were suspiciously sickly and chopped up - looking like they just came out of a bag in the freezer. The pho also wasn’t helped by the rubbery looking beef slices that weren’t particularly thin or premium tasting. At least there’s usually free space and the service is quick. A redeeming honorable mention goes out to the chicken broth that came with the rice dish a friend ordered (you got me, Julian).
Pho M&K Vietnamese House
What better way to recover from a late night of dancing to some nasty UK DnB at Village than to transit down to Richmond and eat a steaming hot bowl of soup. I got down to Richmond late in the afternoon, and entering Pho M&K, I was a bit nervous to see that only one other table in the restaurant was full. However, trend-setter that I am, less than thirty minutes after I’d arrived, only one table in the restaurant was free - the others occupied from parties ranging from single men scrolling their phones to a large family happily babbling away.
9/10 - The best Pho places check the most basic of boxes. Light broth? Check. Ultra-thin beef slices? Check. Fast service that kept up with the copious amount of water I drank throughout my meal? Check. The spring rolls were excellent and perfectly fried, while the pho tai tasted slightly different than normal - there was a herbal undercurrent to the broth that was unexpected yet pleasing. Additionally, the traditional cilantro had been replaced with green onions, again and unexpected but welcome change.