New Vietnamese restaurant already quite popular with locals
Published 6:00 pm Thursday, October 19, 2017
La Pho’s Char Chiu Barbecue Pork is seasoned pork served with carrots, broccoli and white rice.
La Pho Bar & Grill, a new Vietnamese restaurant at 1756 W. Prien Lake Road in Prien Lake Plaza (the Target shopping center), opened two weeks ago.
The owners of La Pho tried to go for a quiet, soft opening this first month, said co-owner Simon Vo, but the opening is turning out to be a not-quite-so-soft one.
“The first day, over 400 people showed up,” said Vo. “It’s crazy. People have just heard about it by word of mouth. We’ve been busy.”
The restaurant’s name is pronounced “La Fuh.” When I visited with two co-workers on Tuesday, the place was full, but did not feel overly crowded.
Customers walk in, order and pay at the counter, then take a number affixed to a foot-tall, metal stand and find a table.
One half of a Grilled Pork Banh Mi.
When your food is ready, which in our case was quickly, the wait staff brings it to you.
Not being overly familiar with Vietnamese food, I did a little online research beforehand to get a handle on exactly what “pho” was.
I learned it’s a soup served with white rice flour noodles — and it’s a breakfast staple in Vietnam.
La Pho’s Shrimp Spring Rolls are filled with shrimp, vermicelli, lettuce and bean sprouts.
Pho refers to the noodles, but the dish is mostly judged by the broth that surrounds the noodles. A good pho broth is clear, spicy and aromatic.
The La Pho menu offers eight noodle soup choices. I ordered a bowl of Pho Ga for $9.95. It’s basically a chicken noodle soup with white-meat chicken and rice noodles in a beef broth. The broth was wonderful. It was clear, spicy and aromatic, just like I read it should be.
The soup came served in a bowl about the size of a soccer ball cut in half, so don’t think that if you come here and just order a bowl of soup you’ll walk out hungry. You won’t. It is filling, but in a light and healthy way. I liked it very much. It came with a side plate of things you could add to the soup if you wanted to. These offerings included bean sprouts, a twig of basil and a few jalapeño and lime slices.
My co-worker Rita tried the Char Chiu Barbecue Pork for $9.95. Tender, juicy seasoned pork pieces were served with cooked carrots and broccoli and a softball-sized mound of white rice. She was pleased with the choice.
Maria, my other co-worker, gave her pork and shrimp wonton soup appetizer high marks. She also ordered the Grilled Pork Banh Mi for $4.95.
A bowl of Pho Ga
As an explanation for the uninitiated like me, if you order a Banh Mi anything, you are ordering a sandwich. The Banh Mi is a french baguette spread with butter, mayo and pate stuffed with carrots, daikon, cucumber, cilantro and jalapeño. La Pho offers six different kinds, and the grilled pork is one of those kinds.
Maria, too was happy with her selection.
“I love the crunchy, crispness of this bread,” she said.
We all shared an order of shrimp spring rolls served with peanut sauce, and they did not disappoint.
The food is artfully and attractively presented at La Pho. When our order arrived, the first word we all used to describe what we saw was “beautiful.”
Both Rita and Maria became instant fans of the hoisin sauce, a bottle of which can be found at each table. As Rita put it, “I love this sauce. I could eat it on anything.”
“The food at La Pho is 95 percent Vietnamese,” said co-owner Vo as he visited our table. “We tweaked it some for American tastes.”
Traces of French influence and bits of other Asian cultures can also be found on the menu. La Pho caters.
It is open every day from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. The phone number is 564-5971.
Online: https://lapho.net.
