Across from the Publix on Rutherford Boulevard, in a shopping center with an Asian market, Subway, and tobacco and beer store, is Pho Viet, quite possibly Murfreesboro’s premier spot to partake in the cuisine of Vietnam.
Pho Viet opened In January 2018 and offers a menu packed with all sorts of Vietnamese words like nam, tai, gau, gan, sach, com and thit, along with one that many area customers do know: pho. For those still unfamiliar, pho (pronounced “fuh”) is a Southeast Asian soup with lots of rice noodles, generally containing some combination of herbs, meat and veggies.
Luckily for most patrons, the Pho Viet menu contains details on each dish in English. Upon closer examination, most of the pho offerings feature various combinations of beef products such as rare steak, brisket, meatball, tendon, tripe and flank. For example, the pho tai nam gau includes rare steak, well-done flank and flat brisket. The pho tai sach includes the rare steak and tripe, and pho bo vien translates to meatball soup.
“I see a lot of pho in my future,” Denelle Christine Bratcher said after discovering Pho Viet. “Try this place!”
She said she could drink the delicious broth with or without all of the various goodies that Pho Viet offers, which include bean sprouts, large leaves of basil, limes, soy sauce, chili sauce, fish sauce, sriracha, hoisin sauce and more.
While most of the pho selections are beef based, the menu does also contain a chicken pho and a seafood pho.
The steak and meatball pho came loaded with onions, both large pieces of white onions and small pieces of green onions, and the broth was very herb-y, sweet and tasty. While it did not contain a great deal of spice, a small amount of the chili sauce on the table can change that quickly.
Kenny, the Pho Viet owner, sometimes is at the restaurant by himself, taking care of both kitchen and serving duties.
“Be patient on those days,” Sherry Osinga posted in a review, going on to say the pho has “such good flavor.”
All of the tables contain containers with chopsticks, forks and spoons—spoons with nifty hooks on the end to keep them from falling into the massive bowls of goodness—so there are plenty of ways to get the broth, noodles and meat from the bowl to the mouth (though some say having the utensils remaining on the tables throughout the day could raise some sanitation concerns). Diners receive a large plate of bean sprouts with some lime, basil and a few sliced jalapeños prior to getting their meal.
Alex Charles calls the soup at Pho Viet the “best pho I’ve ever had by a long shot.”
Another recent guest to the eatery said to be sure you like a heavy cilantro flavor if you order the chicken pho, and that she felt it needed a little more texture. Although she didn’t care for the bean sprouts offered, the soup eater requested some peanuts to give the pho a little crunch.
In addition to the flagship product, the restaurant offers spring rolls, fried egg rolls, fried wontons, fried rice dishes and other Southeast Asian favorites at the eatery.
The banh mi (sandwiches) are popular as well, and contain cold cuts, head cheese or Vietnamese pork sausages—or all of the above—or with grilled chicken or grilled pork.
Another Pho Viet diner recently said she enjoyed the head cheese banh mi and that the “crispy-crusted bun” gave it a mark of distinction.
“My go-to dish has been bun bo hue. It’s a spicy Vietnamese beef noodle soup that is not quite as popular as pho, but shouldn’t be overlooked,” Kelly K. posted on Yelp. “This noodle soup has vermicelli noodles and is sweet, sour, salty, spicy and has a robust broth . . . it’s a very authentic dish with coagulated pork blood,” she adds, so it may not be for everyone, but “this dish is certainly not available at any other Asian restaurant in the ’Boro.”
Some consumers say that other area Oriental restaurants have pho that is just as tasty as that at Pho Viet, and offer better service and atmospheres.
Mary, who says she has lived, worked and eaten in Southeast Asia, and does her “fair share of cooking and reading about Lao and Thai food,” said she wasn’t impressed with the modest Murfreesboro restaurant.
“The pork was not good quality,” she reported. The fried egg rolls were “terribly greasy and boingy. . . . When I see this treatment of egg rolls, I am immediately on guard.”
After sampling the hu tiew cam bang—soup with shrimp, pork, liver and heart—the reviewer said that “this stuff had been frozen, rendering them dull and off-putting.”
She continued that the mii sua kaow “was too expensive for the lack of attention to detail and very poor execution. The broth was thin and not hot . . . too sweet, lacking in depth. The shrimp was not fully cooked, still coldly opaque.”
She found “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” within mi xiaxiu. “The pork had an unhealthy fuchsia edge. I assume it was something fake added to approximate braised pork,” Mary said.
“I couldn’t fight the creeping realization that hygiene may be a problem here,” she added.
Still, despite some concerns over speed of service, cleanliness, flavoring, pricing and freshness of ingredients, the eatery has earned mostly positive feedback from the Murfreesboro community over its first year in operation, a place where the noodle-heavy pho is clearly the star of the show.
Some diners hesitate to pay $10 for a bowl of broth and noodles, however flavorful it is, but light on the meat. But if you need something warm and brothy on cool day, if you don’t know how to cook soup, or if you just don’t feel very well and need something hot and nourishing, give it a try.
“Just good food that’s good for ya,” Bruce Shelton put it simply.
The Dish
Pho Viet
1722 S. Rutherford Blvd., Murfreesboro
Tuesday–Friday: 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Saturday–Sunday: 10 a.m.–9 p.m.
629-201-8180
Medium pho tai nam gan (steak, flank and tendon soup with noodles) or pho tai bo vien (steak and meatballs): $9.99; Medium shrimp fried rice: $9.99; Spring rolls (2): $3.50; Banh mi cha lua (sandwich with pork sausages): $4.50;
Cam bo luc lac (stir-fried cube beef and veggies served with rice): $12.99
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