Pho Vietnamese Street Food Manchester Review

Pho, pronounced Fur, was started by husband and wife team Stephen and Juliette Wall in 2005, the first restaurant opened was in London. They have now expanded to having restaurants in London, Brighton, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and Cambridge.

Pho opened its doors in Manchester’s Corn Exchange in the summer of 2015 and we visited for lunch shortly thereafter.

First impressions of Pho were very good, we hadn’t booked and although they looked to be quite busy we were welcomed and shown to a table immediately. The restaurant is spread over three floors with seating for up to 150 diners. The interior design is very nice with stone floors, wooden panel walls and wicker lamp shades, giving it a feeling of being in a jungle shack in Vietnam, albeit an upmarket shack.

The claim that the food served at Pho is authentic Vietnamese cuisine is difficult to substantiate as I have never visited Vietnam but I can compare to other Vietnamese restaurants and cafe’s I have visited here in the UK.  I’ll get to that after an overview of the food we tried.

For starters we shared the crispy vegetable spring rolls served with lettuce and herbs to wrap and a nước chấm dip, they were hot and crispy and were stuffed with mixed vegetables, the dipping sauce was a little bland to be honest but a quick squirt of sriracha sauce soon rectified that.

For the main course I asked the waiter which he would choose between the Cà-ri, a rich, fragrant Vietnamese curry with veggies and mushrooms, topped with nuts and served with broken rice or the Xào, which is a stir fry of chilli and greens in a mild gingery sweet sauce, served with broken rice, pickle and Asian herbs. He recommended the curry, I chose the king prawn prawn stir fry. I really should have taken his advice because as mouth watering as the dish sounded it just lacked a little something that I can’t put my finger on, perhaps it was a lack of spice, as once again, I found myself reaching for the sriracha sauce. The broken rice was, as the name might suggest, smaller than normal grains of rice, the taste and texture a little like cous-cous. The greens outnumbered the prawns but there really wasn’t much of either.

We also had the Chicken Bún, vermicelli rice noodles with a lemongrass and chilli wok-fried topping. This dish also came with another veggie spring roll. The noodles were nice and fresh and the beansprouts added a nice crunch, the chicken was well cooked but still tender with a good texture. My girlfriend doesn’t like her food too spicy but even she added some sriracha sauce to liven the dish up a little.

I should add that we had to wait a very long time for the starter to arrive and then the main course came within minutes of our empty starter plates being removed.

In summary, I wouldn’t say the food was bad at Pho, it wasn’t, it was fresh and well presented but I would say it was more like the food served at Tampopo or Wagamamas than at any authentic Vietnamese restaurant or cafe I have been to before. Perhaps it was our choice of dishes or perhaps the menu has been designed to appeal to a wider western audience.

Having said all that, I would return again at some point to try the signature dish of Pho and also the Cà-ri.