28 Sep 2025
From Vietnam with love – Matt Adams visits the city’s newest chain restaurant…
If someone had said to me a few months ago that St Albans’ hottest new restaurant would be predominantly selling soup, then Heinz think they didn’t Knorr what they were talking about… and, why broth-er?
But contrived puns aside, it’s refreshing to see something different adding to the city which has obviously ticked the right box for local diners.
The queue of people snaking down St Peter’s Street hoping to take advantage of Free Pho Day was one thing, but seeing the restaurant packed out early on a Wednesday evening proves it’s more than a flash in a pan, with a definite hunger among foodies hoping to enjoy the same dishes in a much less stressful environment.
Vietnamese cuisine has been lacking from the city’s culinary portfolio – takeaway options aside. For the uninitiated, it features colourful dishes with a balance of complex flavours, such as the traditional noodle soup known as pho.
The focus is on fresh, aromatic ingredients and combinations of five fundamental tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy. There isn’t a lot of oil or dairy, and most of the dishes are rice-based rather than wheat, which means they are almost always naturally gluten-free.
If you’re still unsure what to select from the extensive menu, there’s help at hand. Staff are obviously well-trained in all aspects of the restaurant’s ethos and will take the time to go through the menu in advance of ordering, and then again when dishes are brought out, offering suggestions as how best to enjoy each item.
That might be squeezing fresh lime into a mix of seasoning to make a dipping paste, or selecting from the vast array of extras on the table to liven up your meal, including fresh chillis and bottles of fish sauce and sriracha hot sauce.
The decor is very street market chic, all neon signs, earthy colours and soft woods, illuminated by basket-weave lights. The tables are functional rather than fancy, but there is plenty of room and the ample interior space ensures you don’t feel crammed in with other diners.
Unfortunately my back was to the large hatch way offering views into the kitchen, because watching the food being prepared can be just as exciting as actually eating it.
Having munched through a bowl of prawn crackers while browsing the menu, we picked some dishes from the budget-friendly kids’ menu for the children (nine and five) before taking a punt on some starters.
My choice of crispy spring rolls was a welcome change from the soggy, beansprout-loaded equivalent we have come to expect from the less salubrious Chinese takeaway, instead offering a mix of deeply flavoursome fresh vegetables packed into thick and crunchy rice paper.
Our server suggested wrapping it in lettuce and fresh mint before dipping into a rich peanut sauce, which lifted the dish to a whole new level.
Mouthwatering and moreish, it’s likely to become your default option when it comes to spring rolls, elevating what is arguably little more than street food to something truly worth celebrating.
Equally impressed with her choice of starter, my partner rather generously shared her fried baby squid with the nine-year-old, mixing a recommended dip out of lime, salt and pepper to complement the tender tentacles. There’s nothing worse than chewy squid, but this was reassuringly light and zingy, and went down a treat.
Deciding to explore different aspects of the menu’s main dishes, I selected the spicy chicken curry with broken rice, while my significant other went all in with the hot and spicy tofu and mushroom soup served with pho noodles, accompanied by stir-fried morning glory (water spinach) in garlic to ensure she achieved her five-a-day.
The curry was flavoursome and fragrant, the ample sauce packed with crunchy vegetables, plenty of succulent chicken, and topped off with a sprinkling of peanuts and chillis. It wasn’t quite hot enough for me, but there are plenty of options for spicing things up found on the table, so I soon had it hitting the right heights of heat.
The soup was absolutely massive, a huge bowl of delicious broth packed to bursting with soft mushrooms and firm tofu. Having once ordered a
tofu Thai takeaway which featured just two measly chunks of bean curd, Pho’s plentiful portions are more than welcome.
Donning the bib provided to avoid any splashbacks, my partner did her best to finish, but it just proved too much of a challenge, although I made sure the same wasn’t true of my curry, which disappeared rather too quickly from my plate.
Pho is more than welcome to St Albans city centre, offering exceptional food in a lively and comfortable atmosphere where customer service is at the forefront of the dining experience. If you’re looking for a long, leisurely meal it’s perhaps a little too fast-paced, but then street food fits that sort of vibe, so perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that dishes are delivered quick fire to the table.
With Wagamama just on the other side of Christopher Place Shopping Centre, it remains to be seen whether the city centre has enough demand for Asian food to keep them both busy, but you could say the same about pizzerias and there’s certainly no shortage of them!
