Pho Bac, Irvine

There are some things that the OC does well, and there are some things it really does not. Like for example, chain restaurants and mini malls. If ever the mood for chain restaurant food in a mega strip mall with plenty of parking strikes my fancy, I hop on the 405 and head straight south behind the Orange Curtain.

Another thing that the OC does pretty well is Vietnamese food. Living on the westside, there is a dearth of good Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese food. Luckily, I can make my K-food runs to K-town, and I'm not a big fan of Chinese food anyway, so that doesn't bother me. But sometimes, the mood for some broken rice or pho or just a healthy dose of MSG realy kicks in. What do I do? I hop to the mediocre, yet overpriced pho chain, Pho 99 on Wilshire, suck it up, and have some Vietnamese food that leaves me strangely unsatisfied. At times I make eye contact with other Asian Americans who are obviously kids of immigrants who also have the sigh of resignation on their faces.

So when I was in OC over the weekend, I was excited to go have some authentic Vietnamese food. We were gonna hit up Little Saigon for our usual broken rice spot, where nobody speaks a lick of English and you basically have to point to what you want, but it was a bit of a drive so we decided to go to our other spot in Irvine, which is a little cleaner, and the staff can verbally communicate with you.

I had a big bowl of pho tai, or rare steak Pho. It was fantastic! The soup was fresh, and I could really taste the star anise, the noodles had just been made and the beef was cut into nice thick slices. I got plenty of basil and cilantro (my favorites), as well as fresh lime, bean sprouts and jalepenos. All that for about 6 bucks. The same dish costs about 9 bucks on Wilshire, and doesn't taste as good.

Someone, please, bring Pho Bac to the westside...

Pho Bac
4250 Barranca Pkwy # K
Irvine, CA (949) 857-8808‎