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. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Pho
Pho Tempo III (Burnsville, MN)
Last year I posted two reports on meals eaten at Pho Tempo, the current incarnation of the erstwhile Saigon Deli, the restaurant attached to Saigon Market in Burnsville (here and here). I pronounced it easily the best Vietnamese restaurant we’ve eaten at in the South Metro and among the very best in the Twin Cities proper. In mid-2024 I can tell you that I still do not have any reason to revise that evaluation. Pho Tempo has become part of our regular rotation and indeed part of our regular monthly grocery shopping routine. This routine involves a long outing with stops at Costco (for staples), Hana Market (for Korean ingredients) and Mantra Bazaar (for Indian ingredients). In between we stop at Saigon Market to buy pompano and greens and usually also to eat lunch at Pho Tempo. Since returning from our Bombay/Seoul program in late-March we’ve eaten there four times on this itinerary. Here now is a quick report on all those meals. Continue reading
Pho Ca Dao (St. Paul, MN)
I have a quick report today on one of the Twin Cities’ classic pho restaurants. Pho Ca Dao is located on University Avenue (where else?) at Arundel—right across the street from Thai Garden and Cheng Heng—and is as pure a pho operation as you can get. Well, I suppose if they only served pho it would be purer but they don’t serve very much more than that. Only one other savoury dish in fact: egg rolls. Yes, if you turn the menu over there are some desserts and some drinks but you don’t go to Pho Ca Dao if pho is not what you are looking for. You can choose between two set options, the Traditional (with steak, flank and tripe) or the House Special (which adds meatballs) or you can rig a custom bowl with a choice of any three meats (tendon, fatty brisket and chicken are the three others available). Your only other choice is whether you want a small or a large bowl. Then you sit back and wait. Continue reading
Pho Tempo II (Burnsville, MN)
Earlier this year I posted a review of a couple of lunches at Pho Tempo, the revamped restaurant attached to Saigon Asian Market in Burnsville. I then pronounced it the best Vietnamese restaurant south of the river and one of the better ones in the Twin Cities metro on the whole. After several meals eaten there since then I see no reason to change that assessment: this is clearly the best Vietnamese restaurant in the South Metro and I don’t think there can be too many better ones in the larger area. And if there are, I would really like to know which they are. Here follows a quick look at three meals eaten there since the spring. Continue reading
Pho Tempo (Burnsville, MN)
This is both my first review of Pho Tempo in Burnsville and it is not. That is because Pho Tempo is the new name of the restaurant attached to Saigon Market (in the Towne & Country shopping centre, where Highway 13 meets Cliff Ave.). I posted a pandemic takeout report on it back when it was still called Saigon Deli (that name persists in the check printouts at Pho Tempo). But it’s not just the name that has changed. The space—still open to the market on two sides—has been renovated and the menu too has been given a refresh. The result is what is probably the best Vietnamese restaurant in the South Metro, and one that, in my opinion, gives many of the better places in the Twin Cities proper a run for their money. So we thought, anyway, after two meals eaten there this past week. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 51: Trieu Chau (St. Paul, MN)
We’ve eaten a fair bit of Vietnamese food in this past pandemic year but somehow we hadn’t gotten back to the restaurant that has over the last several years been perhaps our favourite slinger of pho: Trieu Chau on University Ave. in St. Paul. Well, we fixed that this past weekend. I’m not sure what incarnations their service model has gone through in the last year but they are currently open for dine-in and takeout. We are, however, not yet open for dining in and so it was takeout only for us. I called in our order just after 10 am (which is when they seem to open even though their menu etc. says 11 am) and picked it up just before 11. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 43: Pho Everest (Lakeville, MN)
We’ve been trying very hard through the pandemic, even in the winter, to get in a long family walk every weekend before picking up takeout. We’ve managed it most weeks, though sometimes a bit farcically. Two weeks ago, for example, we arrived at a park in Richfield to find the walking trails entirely covered in sheet ice—we ended up walking a couple of miles on very unattractive sidewalk through the adjoining neighbouhood instead. Some weekends, however, we succumb to laziness. And so even though this past weekend was warm by January in Minnesota standards the family ended up vegging indoors while I drove a scant 20 minutes to Lakeville to pick up Vietnamese food from Pho Everest in the Crossroads strip mall at the corner of Dodd and Cedar Avenue. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 36: Saigon Deli (Burnsville, MN)
The original plan for last weekend had been to drive up to St. Paul for a walk and pick up either Cambodian or Ethiopian takeout from one of our favourite places on/off University Ave. But things didn’t quite pan out that way. Instead I went a little closer to home: to Saigon Deli in Burnsville. This is the restaurant attached to the Saigon Market. We have not yet eaten there. We used to shop regularly at Saigon Market when they were located in Eagan, a hop, skip and a jump from The Cellars. A few years ago they moved to their new digs on Highway 13 in Burnsville. I’d made a few forays to check out the new space at its scheduled opening but it took them quite a while longer to actually get going and by the time that happened they had completely slid off my radar. I have to thank my friend Pierre therefore for mentioning the store in an email last week. I finally stopped in and picked up a bunch of frozen fish and quite a bit of food from the restaurant. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 29: Pho Pasteur (St. Paul, MN)
The plan for this past weekend had originally been a walk around a park in Maplewood followed by takeout from Indian Masala, an Indian restaurant in Maplewood that’s been recommended highly to me by Mike McGuinness (who runs the excellent East Metro Foodies Facebook group). But the plan never quite came together and we ended walking around Como Lake instead and picking up more Vietnamese food to take back to the yard of the friends in St. Paul we often do these walk+meals with. On the last occasion we’d picked up lunch from iPho by Saigon; this time we hit up Pho Pasteur, which is very close to their house. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 26: iPho by Saigon (St. Paul, MN)
After four weeks of eating food from restaurants in the South and West Metro (from House of Curry, Grand Szechuan, Pho Valley and Godavari), we finally made it back to St. Paul this weekend. Not surprisingly, we ended up on University Ave.—the Twin Cities’ true “Eat Street”—not too far from Homi, our last port of call in St. Paul. It was another Vietnamese meal, this time from iPho by Saigon. As it happens my very first meal in Minnesota was here when I visited friends in the November of 2006—it was then called just Saigon. We ate there after we moved here the following year as well but somehow not since I started reviewing restaurants on the blog. I’m not sure at what point they tacked on the “iPho by” to their name but it’s been several years. We’ve been tempted over the years but somehow when looking for Vietnamese food in that neck of the woods we usually end up at Trieu Chau. This weekend, however, was iPho by Saigon. How did it go? Continue reading
Pho Everest, Again (Lakeville, MN)
We have a long history of making poor decisions when it comes to bad weather and driving long distances for food; and so the morning snow on Saturday did not keep us from sticking to our plan to drive to St. Paul for lunch at iPho followed by a trip to the Science Museum. There wasn’t much snow falling from the sky and the friends we were planning to caravan with said roads were clear in town and we figured the highway would be fine too. It didn’t take too long to discover, however, that the highway was not fine. Slick conditions meant a bunch of cars spun out and in the ditch and a mile or so from the exit for Lakeville traffic was slowed to a crawl. We called our friends in their car and we all decided it was a good idea to not drive to St. Paul even if traffic opened up by the time we got to the exit. Well, it didn’t and so we got off and decided to go to Pho Everest in Lakeville instead. Continue reading
Tay Ho (St. Paul, MN)
At the end of October I published a little tribute to University Avenue in St. Paul—in my opinion the Twin Cities’s true “Eat Street”. My post covered a three mile stretch from just west of Snelling to just east of Western, stopping at Bangkok Thai Deli. In the comments, Ed Bast recommended Tay Ho, a Vietnamese restaurant just a little further east from Bangkok Thai Deli. Embarrassed that I’d never eaten there, I resolved to fix that right away. Accordingly, we descended on them on the following weekend with two of our friends who often join us on our weekend eating jaunts. Here’s how it went down. Continue reading
Saigon Palace (Burnsville, MN)
After my review of Pho Valley a couple of weeks ago I thought I was done for the foreseeable future with reviews of Vietnamese restaurants in the South Metro. The only other one I was aware of is a place in Eagan that is of interest only because Yelp reviews suggest you are more likely to be sworn at than to eat well if you go there. (I am actually tempted to go there for that reason.) Saigon Palace is not that restaurant. It is located in Burnsville, right off 35W (if going north on the highway, get off on Burnsville Parkway and go right and it’ll be in the first strip mall on the right). I discovered its existence while casting about for places to eat relatively close to the Works Museum (which the brats enjoy very much) and it seemed worth a try. As luck would have it, I had a number of reasons to be in that neighbourhood over the next couple of weeks and so went back a number of times, twice with the missus. Herewith, my report. Continue reading
Pho Valley (Apple Valley, MN)
Following my reviews of Pho Everest in Lakeville, Cam Ranh Bay in Burnsville and Simplee Pho in Apple Valley, here is another report on a no-frills but solid Vietnamese place in the Twin Cities South Metro: Pho Valley in Apple Valley. They mostly sling pho and they’re in Apple Valley and hence the name, I assume. They’ve been open somewhere between one and two years and are located in the mega strip mall at the intersection of Cedar Avenue and 150th/County Road 42. It’s a larger restaurant than Simplee Pho but has a more limited menu. On the plus side, most of what I’ve had of what they put out has been mostly pretty solid. Continue reading
Simplee Pho (Apple Valley, MN)
As I’ve noted before, of all (relatively) recently arrived immigrant cuisines, Vietnamese may be the most friendly to the stereotypical Midwestern palate. This is particularly true of pho-centered restaurants—which is pretty much what all Vietnamese restaurants in Minnesota are. Mild broth, rice noodles, lots of meat: it’s no surprise that Minnesotans have taken to pho in a big way—especially given our bastard winters. And in recent years, as new housing developments have popped up along Hwy 77/Cedar Avenue between where we live in the hamlets of Rice County and south Minneapolis, Vietnamese restaurants have also popped up to help feed them. I have already reviewed Pho Everest in Lakeville. Here now is a report on several meals eaten over the last few months at Apple Valley’s Simplee Pho. Continue reading
Pho Tau Bay (Minneapolis)
In the last year I’ve posted a number of reviews of Vietnamese restaurants in the Twin Cities and environs. There are two major thoroughfares in the area where the best of these can be found. One is University Avenue in St. Paul (home to Trieu Chau); the other is Nicollet “Eat Street” Avenue in Minneapolis. I’m yet to cover University Avenue in any detail but have already posted write-ups of two Vietnamese restaurants at the north end of Eat Street (Pho Hoa and Pho 79). Close to the middle of the street is the one that’s the most popular one of them all, Quang. This is not a review of Quang but of the restaurant that is at the very south end, the very end of Eat Street: Pho Tau Bay. It’s not exactly unknown but it’s also not talked about as much as it should be when it comes to Vietnamese food in the Twin Cities. Here’s a brief write-up. Continue reading
Trieu Chau (St. Paul)
Though you wouldn’t know it from my unending stream of reviews of restaurants in London and Scotland—interrupted only by a writeup of the Little Africa festival in St. Paul last month—we’ve been back in Minnesota for almost three months now. And though you wouldn’t also know this from the blog, we’ve been eating a lot of one of the cuisines that Minnesota has far better exemplars of than London: Vietnamese (the other is Mexican). Accordingly, I am taking the opportunity to resume the slow-motion survey of noodle soup purveyors in the Twin Cities metro area that I’d commenced last winter with reviews of Pho Hoa, Pho 79 and Cam Ranh Bay. And what better place to start than Trieu Chau, which has been around for almost 30 years on University Avenue in St. Paul and remains one of the local gold standards for pho and more. No one in the broader Twin Cities area who likes Vietnamese food needs to be told about Trieu Chau but it’s always good to confirm that the old reliables are still reliable. Continue reading