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Food guide

How to find good pho

Pho is a clear broth, and clarity is unforgiving. Everything in the bowl is visible and nothing is emulsified, so a stock that was rushed announces itself immediately.

What separates a good one from a bad one

  • Clear broth that still tastes of beef — This is the whole craft: a stock simmered gently for many hours, skimmed constantly, never boiled hard. Cloudy broth means it was boiled, and boiled broth tastes muddy no matter how long it cooked.
  • Charred ginger and onion, and whole spices — Star anise, cassia, clove, coriander seed, black cardamom. You should be able to smell the spice before you taste it. A broth that smells of nothing but salt is a stock cube with ambitions.
  • Herbs arriving separately — Thai basil, bean sprouts, lime, chilli on a side plate, added by you. A bowl that arrives fully garnished has made the decision for you and the herbs have already wilted.
  • Noodles that are not gluey — Flat rice noodles, cooked to order, loose in the bowl. Clumped noodles mean they were cooked in advance.
  • A place that sells mostly pho — Same rule as ramen. Broth this slow is not a side project.

What to order

  • Pho tai — Rare beef, sliced thin and cooked by the broth at the table. The default, and the best test of how hot the broth actually is.
  • Pho dac biet — The combination — rare beef, brisket, tendon, tripe, meatball. What to order if you want to know what the kitchen can do.
  • Pho ga — Chicken. Lighter, and in many shops quietly better than the beef.
  • Northern vs southern — Northern (Hanoi) pho is spare — wider noodles, just spring onion, no garnish plate. Southern (Saigon) is sweeter, with the full herb plate and hoisin and sriracha on the side. Most American pho is southern.
  • Add hoisin to the dish, not the bowl — Squeezing sauce into the broth means the next spoonful of a stock somebody simmered for eight hours tastes of hoisin. Dip the meat instead.

Where to find pho

Pho is mostly found at pho and Vietnamese noodle-soup shops, so that is where to look. Open listings put 6,912 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.

Cities with the most

San Jose, CA 191 Seattle, WA 131 Westminster, CA 128 Garden Grove, CA 128 San Francisco, CA 120 New York, NY 108 Houston, TX 103 Portland, OR 80 Philadelphia, PA 65 Chicago, IL 64 San Diego, CA 63 Los Angeles, CA 59

Campuses with the most within a mile

Seattle U 44 NYU 40 Pace University 27 Laney College 27 BMCC 26 Jefferson 25 The New School 25 Seattle Central 22 San Jose State University 21 Hawaii Pacific University 18

A few to start with

Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.

How Savor Scout looks for it

Searching pho, the matcher looks for reviews describing the broth specifically — clear, rich, fragrant, star anise — because broth quality is what people actually comment on when a place is good, and it never shows up in a star rating. Places whose reviews mention the herb plate and fresh noodles rank higher than places with a higher average and no such detail.

Find pho near you →

Looking in a particular city?

Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.

All 1,000 cities →

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