My Twin Cities restaurant reporting for 2025 begins fittingly on the Cities’ true “Eat Street”, University Avenue in St. Paul. And it finds me finally writing about one of University Avenue’s Vietnamese mainstays: Hoa Bien. They have been in their current location at the corner of University and Lexington Pkwy since 2005. But as per the staff, the original location—also on University—had opened in the late 1970s. I’m not sure if that makes them the oldest extant Vietnamese restaurant in the Twin Cities but it must certainly put them in the running. (If anyone reading knows more about which places, if any, have been around longer, please write in.) They’ve been at this location since before we arrived in Minnesota (in 2007) and we ate there fairly early in our time here. After that they fell out of our rotation well before I started reviewing restaurants on the blog and I never got around to going back and writing them up. I’m happy to be able to fix that now. We ate two meals there at the end of the year, on successive weekends. Here’s how they went.

The restaurant is open six days a week from 10 am to 8 pm. Wednesdays are when they’re closed though you should also be advised that the dining room closes at 7 pm to all but to-go orders and if you want to eat dinner there, to be safe, you probably need to arrive before 6.30 pm. In our case, both our meals were eaten on the weekend and both were lunches.

At the first lunch it was just the four of us. We got a booth in the larger part of the dining room (there’s a semi-enclosed room off to the left when you enter as well which has a couple of tables) and quickly got down to business. Their menu is a nice mix of the classics of the Vietnamese American restaurant repertoire and some more dishes that you won’t find at most other Vietnamese restaurants. Which is to say they offer more than just pho, bun, com, mi and hu tieu. There’s a section of congees, for example, on the menu, as well as a section of hot and sour soups, and a section called “Family Style Dining” that has a number of large dishes that you won’t see at very many places.

We ordered across the menu. We ordered the Salted Pork Ribs (which we were told would take 20 minutes); the Banh Xeo (a rice flour “pancake”/”crepe” that’s filled with sprouts, pork and shrimp and eaten wrapped with the greens and herbs served with it; Bun Bo Hue; Mi Xao Don (crisply-fried egg noodles served with various veg, shrimp, chicken and beef); and the Mi Hoanh Thanh (egg noodle soup with wontons). The older boy ate most of the Mi Xao Don and enjoyed it; the younger boy ate most of the Mi Hoanh Thanh and may have enjoyed it even more. The missus ate most of the Banh Xeo, which was the pick of the lot. I had most of the Bun Bo Hue, which was just about okay—the broth didn’t really have the earthy depth or funk of the best bun bo hues; it tasted like it was their regular pho broth with some things added to it. Alas, when we asked if the pork ribs were coming out we were told the order had mistakenly not been placed with the kitchen. Given the 20 minute window we got the Fried Chicken Wings instead and the boys inhaled them as soon as they emerged.

For pictures of the restaurant, the menu and the food at this meal, please launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much this meal cost and to see what we got at the next meal.

One of the boys got a limeade to go with his meal. With that, tax and tip the total came to $96. Even though we said it wasn’t necessary, they comped us the wings to make up for the error with the ribs.

So, this meal was fine but nothing so very amazing. Why then did we go back a week later? Well, because we wanted to try some of the dishes from the “Family Style Dining” section of the menu as well. At this meal we were joined by three friends we eat out with often. We ordered everything to share.

What did we get? Chao Long (congee with gizzards) to which we added an order of Chao Quay or bread sticks; Pho Dac Biet (so we could try their pho broth); Banh Cuon (steamed rice flour rolls stuffed with pork and served with a lot of veg and Vietnamese ham); Salted Pork Ribs (which came out this time); Bun Tom Nuong (rice noodle salad with shrimp); Ca Kho To (salted braised catfish with rice in a clay pot); and Lau Canh Chua Ca (a hot-sweet-sour soup with catfish, pineapple etc.). The pho was fine but nothing out of the ordinary. We liked everything else very much, however. My favourites were the Banh Cuon and the Ca Kho To. The catfish soup reminded me of similar sour-sweet soups at Cambodian restaurants but that’s not surprising given the geography.

For a look at this meal, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it cost, for thoughts on service and to see what’s coming next.

With tax and tip the total came to about $116. (They include a 15% gratuity for parties of 6 or more and so we added a bit more to get it up to 20%.) Service, by the way, was very friendly on both visits. There are two younger people taking care of the front of the house on both occasions and they were very good at explaining dishes and so forth. The restaurant was busy on both occasions, not because the dining rooms were full (though plenty of tables were occupied over the course of our meal) but because they seem to do a brisk take-out/delivery trade as well.

On the whole, I would not particularly recommend Hoa Bien if pho is what you are looking for. I would take Trieu Chau and a few other places on University Avenue over them for that (and for the more standard dishes). But I would recommend them if you are interested in eating Vietnamese dishes beyond the most familiar. My guess is we will return at some point to try even more of those dishes.

Okay, what’s next on the food front? Frantic preparation for the new term that started on Monday meant that I could not get my last Delhi reports done. I’ll get to those this week. Next week’s Twin Cities restaurant report will be from the high end of the market: the missus and I are scheduled to eat our first meal at Alma this year on Saturday.