I know the Pho is a Vietnamese soup; at least I think I know but have never tasted it. However, the name of every Pho restaurant I have seen the word Pho is followed by a number. Today I saw Pho7 and Pho79.
Is there any significance to the number? Is it the number of the Pho recipe used in the restaurant? The number of people the restaurant can hold? The age of the restaurant owner?
Just curious here and I have no idea how to Google this.
Bob
I always figured it was the year it opened.
There aren’t many pho places with numbers around here, but if there is it’s probably the highway or route that it’s on.
This article jibes with other things I’ve heard. Basically it’s just one of those things, a sort of tradition. restaurants picked numbers to distinguish themselves from other restaurants, because why not? Specific numbers are chosen for different reasons, from simply being lucky numbers, to being numbers with personal significance. Some are indeed the year the joint opened.
I’ve just always assumed it’s lucky numbers or something. Here, there’s Pho 777 and Pho 888. Nothing to do with highways, addresses, or years of opening.
Pho 88 and Pho 99 are the two I can think of around here, as well as my favourite Pho Mi 99.
We have a Pho King, which is fun, given that “Pho” is pronounced “Phuh.”
(Very yummy! If you have any liking for Chinese and Japanese food, Vietnamese cuisine will likely please you.)
Interesting. I always thought they were indicating the number of ways in which they served pho at any particular place, sort of a brag about their variety.
I dunno; I’ve always found Vietnamese cooking to be kind of boring, compared to Chinese (or for that matter, compared to Thai or Cambodian).
Or they could just pick a letter, like Pho Q.
There was an Asian fusion/sushi restaurant around here that lasted only about a year. They had a number in the name that I don’t recall but I think it was their street address.
The problem I’ve run into is the Vietnamese restaurants I’ve run across have limited menus or the Vietnamese dishes are part of a variety of other Asian styles. Based on what’s been available for me I’d have to agree that the food is kind of boring, or indistinguishable from other Asian styles.
In my neck of the woods here in Connecticut, the number corresponds to the house/building number in their street address.
For example, Pho 170 is located at 170 Main Street in Middletown.
I assume it’s just an easy way to distinguish one restaurant from another, while also giving a clue to the location.
I asked a Vietnamese co-worker about this and his English wasn’t great, but apparently the numbers correspond to the school or style of school where the chef learned to prepare pho. A lot of these joints don’t strike me as places that hired schooled master chefs at any recent point. I figure it’s like any descriptor for chili or BBQ: Maybe they really learned this in Texas or Cincinnati, maybe they didn’t.
Maybe it’s due to the kind of large number of Vietnamese immigrants there are in my area, and the relatively small number of Chinese or Thai immigrants, Vietnamese cuisine seems very different from the Chinese or Thai cuisine I can get here. Vietnamese here is usually lighter than Thai, and more fragrant and spicy than Chinese. That’s a generalization, but it’s how it seems.
I’ve never knowingly had any Cambodian cuisine, though, and didn’t realize it till now. I’ll have to find some.
And yeah, Dish+somehow significant numbers=Name of restaurant seems like a pretty good idea. Particularly since Vietnamese has a lot of unfortunate homonyms with English, especially when mixed such as Pho King.
Our local place is Pho Real. No number.
Excellent pho, though!
Probably a couple dozen pho places within a few miles of where I live in San Leandro, CA, and the only one I can think of that has a number in it is Saigon 2 which I’ve just assumed means that this is their second restaurant. (There is a taqueria chain that include #X in their store names.)
So no help to the question, just a contrary data point about whether it is a common/universal thing.
Since a casual search shows restaurants with names ranging from Pho 7 to Pho 99 at least, this seems unlikely.
If you’re gonna have the patrons order by number, you might as well put one on the sign, too.
I have seen several with the name Pho King Good.
I am tempted to call them, just to hear the greeting.
Maybe it’s the number of people so far that have asked what the number is for? 