The stream of visitors making the pilgrimage to Pho An is testament to the restaurant’s reputation as Sydney’s best pho. The famous broth of beef shank bones, ginger, star anise, cloves and cardamon brews for 10 hours, and the aroma fills the unpretentious dining room of tiled floors and plastic chairs, luring admirers of authentic Vietnamese fare back for bowl after bowl.
This isn’t your traditional Vietnamese food — in fact, gua bao isn’t Vietnamese food at all. But busy city-centre lunch spot Mr Bao dishes up a delectable twist on the Taiwanese classic with Japanese and Vietnamese influences, adding contemporary Vietnamese flavours — we’re talking pork belly with a crunchy sheet of crackling — to the pillowy soft-steamed buns.
The neon lights, exposed brick, graffitied walls and jam jars hanging from the ceiling set the scene for this trendy contemporary Asian restaurant in salubrious Potts Point, serving a fusion of Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese cuisine including banh mi, Vietnamese steak tartare and sweet and sour lamb ribs.
This small Vietnamese cafe is a local favourite of the inner-city suburb of Darlinghurst, always jammed full of patrons enjoying delectable rice paper rolls, crispy chicken in plum sauce and banh xeo (rice pancakes) packed with duck, prawns and a garden full of fresh herbs. You can also grab a take-away if you can’t nab a table.
Don’t let the kitschy knick-knack decor put you off — this vegetarian eatery is a must-visit for health-conscious diners, with plenty of gluten- and dairy-free options. The menu isn’t split into ‘starters’ and ‘mains’ but Act I and Act II. Begin with Vietnamese tapas with a South American influence (quinoa rice paper rolls, for instance), followed by generous pho and noodle salads that put a veggie spin on the Vietnamese classics.
If you’re after Sydney’s most authentic Vietnamese food, jump on the train to Cabramatta and stroll down John Street, where the aroma of basil, bread and nuoc cham billows out of the shop fronts. Tan Viet is the pick of the bunch, famous for its Vietnamese soup noodles with crisp-skin chicken and tomato rice mopped up with a crusty bread roll. You can’t miss it among John Sreet’s forest of top-notch eateries, Tan Viet is the one with the massive queue snaking out the door.
Newtown’s King St has cuisine from every corner of the globe, with Vietnam being no exception — and this is the best choice (and best-value) in the neighbourhood. The plain dining room is full of hipster locals slurping on hearty chicken pho that costs less than a tenner — a needle-in-a-haystack price by Sydney standards.
Can a restaurant take the meat out of the Vietnamese classics and still serve delicious dishes? You bet. This vegan Vietnamese eatery uses fresh local ingredients as well as mock chicken, pork and beef — plus plenty of tofu — to produce favourites like BBQ ‘pork’ buns, crunchy ‘prawn’ pancakes, yellow noodle wanton soup and a veggie satay hot plate.
Husband and wife team Hien Le and Lanh Nguyen hail from Hue in Central Vietnam, so they serve traditional South Vietnamese pho nam with a Central Vietnamese twist — that means a sweeter broth loaded with onions, ginger, fried garlic and finished with cracked pepper. The original Illawarra Road location was so popular, they opened a second shop just around the corner (at 260 Marrickville Rd, Marrickville).
You can find banh mi all over Sydney, but it’s worth going out of your way to this tiny Marrickville institution for the best pork rolls in the city. The original site expanded in 2016, so all their crusty baguettes could be baked in-house, and it’s not just the food that’s traditional, the prices are too, with the five pork roll varieties only costing a fiver.