Pho Thuan An, Vietnamese Restaurant

vietnamesepho.blogspot.com

There are quite a lot of Vietnamese restaurants peppered all along Kingsway in Vancouver. I was just searching for “kingsway vancouver vietnamese restaurants” on Google Maps and I counted 14 Vietnamese restaurants. And I think there could be a few more restaurants that Google Maps did not catch.
Many of the restaurants are small hole-in-the-wall types that hardly registers on the radar of foodies. I am not surprised because many of them does look run down and in dire need of a coat of paint.

The Pho Thuan An restaurant is one such restaurant that I would not have chosen to check out on my own. The restaurant, located on Kingsway near the intersection with Fraser, is unremarkable in many ways. Worse still, it is somewhat blocked by a tree that most people will not even know that there is a restaurant in the location.
Even if it is not blocked by the tree, I find that the red letterings on the window does nothing to call out the restaurant at all.

The prices is just about average and in line with the menu you find in most Vietnamese restaurants. The prices hovers around $7 to $8 for rice and noodles dishes with only two dishes at the $12-$13 range. It is the wide variety of Vietnamese food that is the best thing of their menu.
The lady owner told us that they had been operating for six years already. Most of their customers are people who live in the neighborhood. I understand that because they are relatively unknown.
It is certainly a neighborhood restaurant when the customers and the owner chat to each other in Vietnamese. Everyone seems to know each other. Why, even a family who sat next to us chatted us up! And the customer is even very open with us — even telling us the story of how they escaped from South Vietnam when the country lost the war to the north  and how they became boat people, spending 4 years in camps before coming to Canada. Only in a place like this!