Three To Try: Vietnam-Based Pho Institutions With Melbourne Outposts

Melbourne has a well-established pho scene, thanks to the thriving Vietnamese communities in the east and west. Lately, though, it’s entered a new chapter with the arrival of decades-old restaurants direct from Vietnam itself. At these three CBD spots, you can get a taste of famous pho – including two Michelin-awarded versions – straight from the sources in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Pho Thin

Husband-and-wife team Nguyen Lam and Duyen Le Ky were among the first to do it. Around a decade ago, they travelled throughout their native Vietnam in search of the very best pho, eventually landing on Pho Thin – a tiny Hanoi eatery famous for its signature bowls with beef stir-fried in garlic. After convincing founder Nguyen Trong Thin to let them export his 40-year-old concept to Melbourne, the pair opened the first Pho Thin branch outside of Asia (and only the second outside Vietnam) in 2018. Thin travelled to Melbourne ahead of the launch, spending a month visiting local markets, choosing produce and developing a recipe that’s as close to his original as possible.

The resulting northern-style beef-bone broth is cooked overnight for at least 12 hours. You can get it with the famous rare beef-skirt steak fried in oil with lots of garlic. There’s also beef brisket, poached chicken and slow-cooked red-wine beef. Each bowl comes with flat rice noodles, a big serve of chopped spring onion and coriander, and optional extras including raw egg yolk and a Chinese doughnut – long, thin and crunchy – to dip in the soup. C/389 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne (enter through Hardware Lane) 

Pho Bat Dan

After the success of Pho Thin, Nguyen and Duyen made a “mission” of bringing Vietnamese institutions to Melbourne. This year, they opened the very first outpost of Pho Gia Truyen, a Hanoi noodle shop that holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and still draws lines out the door of its original location after 76 years. The Lonsdale Street version is called Pho Bat Dan, a nickname taken from the shop’s address in the Old Quarter of Hanoi: 49 Bat Dan Street. 

It took the couple three years to persuade owner Nguyen Xuan Thang to partner with them and share his closely guarded pho recipe (later he said the partnership felt like “destiny”). Thang came to Melbourne to develop the distinctive broth and rice noodles; even the butcher was shown how to cut the brisket as it’s done in Vietnam. The core beef pho menu has expanded here from three options (rare, well done and brisket) to 16 – including beef ribs, meatballs and extra-fatty brisket – to give diners “more chances to discover the soup”, according to Lam. 197 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne

Pho Le

The latest import to join the ranks comes from Ho Chi Minh City with a richer, sweeter southern-style broth. Introduced by franchise owner The Dao last month, Pho Le draws on more than 50 years of history that started with a street-food trolley and grew to a Michelin-awarded restaurant. At Dao’s Elizabeth Street spot, the beef broth is made fresh every day, simmering for eight to 10 hours with aromatics including cinnamon, star anise, cardamom and ginger. It’s served with one or more of five types of beef – rare, brisket, fatty brisket, tendon or meatballs – in ceramic bowls imported from Bat Trang Ceramic Village in Hanoi, a pottery-making centre of more than 700 years standing. 500 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne

With reporting from Chynna Santos, Quincy Malesovas and Haymun Win.