Nibbles: Pho Valley thrives in Carroll as only Vietnamese restaurant in county
Gideon Bradshaw/Observer-Reporter
Pho Valley, located just outside of Monongahela, is Washington County’s only Vietnamese restaurant.
Gideon Bradshaw/Observer-Reporter
Gideon Bradshaw/Observer-Reporter
Lan Hoang, left, and her husband, Duong Pham, opened Pho Valley in June. The couple is pictured here with their six-year-old daughter, Caden.
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
Pho Valley’s spring rolls come in pairs with a tangy yet sweet peanut sauce, filled with shrimp, bacon, lettuce and rice.
Duong Pham likens his role as an owner of Washington County’s only Vietnamese restaurant to being an ambassador.
“It’s really important when you go and try something new,” Pham says, sitting back down at a booth in Pho Valley, the Vietnamese restaurant he and his wife, Lan Hoang, opened in early June in Carroll Township. “If no one explains it, you don’t know where to start.”
He’s just gotten done bringing two mid-afternoon customers their meals, asking them to try the food and answering their questions.
Just outside of Monongahela, the new business is the only Vietnamese restaurant in the more than 60-mile stretch between Morgantown, W.Va., and the South Hills of Pittsburgh.
Pham says the restaurant’s location means that it’s part of the community whose support it relies on if he’d opened in Pittsburgh. In the several months since opening, the restaurant has managed to attract a clientele of about 80 to 100 people a day who sit for meals or order takeout.
“So far, I would say that it’s going really steady,” Pham says.
The restaurant’s location in a plaza on Route 88 near Mon Valley Hospital probably helps. It can’t hurt that everything is made from scratch, either.
“I would say fresh makes the best food you can get,” he adds.
Pham says pho – a hot soup made from broth, meat, vegetables and noodles – is one of the most popular dishes. A street food in Vietnam, pho became popular internationally since the end of the U.S. invasion in the 1970s, when refugees brought the popular style with them.
Another favorite is bun thit nuong, or barbecued meat and shrimp on top of noodles, Pham says.
Crisp, lightly fried egg rolls and fresh spring rolls with basil are staples of the appetizer list.
Serving a plate of barbecue chicken and rice, Pham says he avoids using salt as a tenderizer because it dries out the meat. Instead, he uses a base of soy sauce and honey with fresh onion, garlic and lemongrass, which adds a subtle lemon-mint note to the dish.
The menu includes Vietnamese coffee, a strong brew sweetened with condensed milk and served on ice. Patrons can also try nuoc hot e, an imported basil seed drink that’s a bit thicker but less sweet than soda or most fruit juice.
The seating area of their restaurant is a simple, clean arrangement of tables and booths in a single room with a counter at the front. The building, located at 1160 Country Club Road, was formerly a deli.
It’s the first restaurant for the couple, who live in Monongahela with their six-year-old daughter, Caden, the youngest of five children. Pham, who immigrated to the United States from Vietnam as a teenager and was later joined by Hoang when they married, spent 27 years working for UniSea, becoming a maintenance supervisor at a plant in Dutch Harbor, Alaska – a Bering Sea port made famous by the show “Deadliest Catch” – that processed fish and crab.
Pham says he spent two years doing research to prepare for the new venture. The family also spent months traveling the United States to visit restaurants and get a feel for the business.
The couple are from Vung Tau, a port city in southern Vietnam. He says people in the south tend to prepare food to be milder than cuisine in the northern regions, and his restaurant doesn’t prepare its food to be spicy unless customers ask.
“I’m from the south, so we don’t eat so much spicy food,” he says.
Pho Valley, at 1160 Country Club Road, is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day but Monday, when it closes all day.