Pho An Hoa, 4832 Central Ave, Charlotte, NC 28205
From the outside, most of the strip malls on Central Avenue can seem like nothing more than run-down, poorly-managed, family joints struggling to make ends meet. Indeed, some of them most likely are; however, behind the low-key, low-rent exteriors are some of the best dishes worth eating in Charlotte. One such place is Pho An Hoa.
Pho An Hoa is a good place to start my conquest of Central Avenue because it is a wonderful representative of what this area of Charlotte has staked out in the city’s culinary scene: Vietnamese. Upon opening the front door you are presented with a medium sized dining room casually decorated with photos of Southeast Asia, various sized fish tanks, buddhas, and other Asiatic ephemera. On my visit, a young and energetic woman ushered us to our table and automatically started giving helpful pointers to those new to the restaurant. My mind was already made up. I had come for one thing: the vermicelli noodle bowl.
As the name of the restaurant proves, Pho is the national dish of Vietnam, a giant steaming bowl of beef broth loaded down with rice noodles, cilantro, basil, mint, sprouts, meats, and an endless variety of whatever fresh vegetables are on hand. Every morning in the streets of Hanoi and Saigon you will see countless groups of people huddled together at small tables, starting their day with a bowl of Pho. The smell of that freshly-made broth as you walk along the narrow sidewalks and alleyways is overpowering and intoxicating. I love Pho. I do. But my love of the soup has been overshadowed by one of the most interesting dishes ever conceived, Bún Thịt Nướng, known here in America as Vermicelli noodles. Pho is the go to soup for occasions where that is called for and craved. Vermicelli is what I could eat everyday until the day I die.
Preferences aside, Pho An Hoa does both dishes with a well practiced precision but this review will be focusing on the Vermicelli. Sorry, Pho enthusiasts. I have another place in mind that will make your taste buds swoon with pleasure. But not today.
First thing worth ordering is a bubble tea, a fruit smoothie chilled till almost frozen and then loaded down with different flavored tapioca pearls. Mango is a sure crowd pleaser and the tapioca once sucked up the straw is a nice little surprise that will pop in your mouth, releasing a sugary jelly with each new bite. If you want a beer with your dinner, order a Tiger Beer. If they don’t have Tiger beer, which most Vietnamese places seem to always be out of when I visit, get a 33 or Hue beer. All of these brews are light, crisp, and great for hot summer days.
To start my meal, I always order what are variously called summer rolls, spring rolls, and fresh rolls: a thin rice noodle paper packed with thin al-dente noodles, shrimp, basil, mint, carrot, cucumber, and on the rare occasion, avocado. Served with the ubiquitous peanut sauce, this appetizer will never do you wrong. And at any Vietnamese establishment, if there’s dumplings on offer and they’re homemade, you must order them. The perfect blend of starchy dough, steamed then fried, and a tender pork filling with a soy-ginger-chili sauce, the dumpling is a small bite of pure satisfaction.
Now for the main attraction. At Pho An Hoa and most Vietnamese places, there will be about 7 or so vermicelli bowls to choose from. Each bowl is tailored for a specific protein preference. And then there’s the bowl for the glutton who can’t get enough of well-grilled meats: Bún thịt nướng chả giò bò tôm. It’s certainly a mouthful, the king of vermicelli, and my all time favorite. Grilled beef, grilled pork, grilled prawns, and a vegetarian spring roll sit atop five inches of rice noodles, which sit atop a bed of basil, mint, sprouts, cucumbers, carrots, and finely-minced peanuts. On your table you’ll find Sriracha, hoisin sauce, and chili paste. All will need to be added in your desired amounts to make the bowl really sing and come alive. Take those chopsticks and get to swirling it all together until you have a prefect distribution of noodle, meat, and vegetable throughout. The final act of preparation comes when you grab that small ramekin of sweet and sour chili sauce and proceed to drown the bowl in its sea of delicately balanced flavors.
One of the delights of eating this dish is that the freshness and hearty flavors of the ingredients are allowed to stand on their own while also melding with their counterparts in the bowl, creating a harmony of all five flavors, salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. It isn’t heavy like Chinese, it isn’t making you sweat through your shirt like Thai can, and it isn’t overly mysterious like Indian food. It sits well in the stomach. It doesn’t weigh you down. It is a healthy balance of the necessary food groups. It is also infinitely customizable, new and different vegetables and meats could easily find a comfortable home in this dish. You can imagine that on those hot monsoon days in the Mekong delta, a bowl of these noodles, cool and loaded with crisp vegetables, would be the perfect remedy from a killer heat. It is, to mix metaphors, goldilocks meets yin and yang: the Dao of Asian cuisine.And coming in at around $10, this dish will not strain your bank account.
Looking around Pho An Hoa you will notice something. This place was built and is run specifically for the large Vietnamese community in Charlotte. No frills. No stereotypical Asian muzak. Just the dishes that remind them of a home that they have had to leave behind. After The NVA and their Vietcong allies rolled into Saigon on April 30th, 1975, everything changed. Hundred of Thousands of our allies in South Vietnam, most of them innocent civilians caught up in events not of their making, were forced to flee to Thailand and the US, that, or face brutal re-education camps where they would most likely have been tortured and forced to worship at the altar of communism and the personality cult of Ho Chi Minh. Charlotte was one of the sanctuary cities set up for these new arrivals. The areas of the city they settled in are now the areas around Tryon and Sugar Creek and the stretch of Central Avenue between Morningside and Albemarle. In fact, most of the Vietnamese eateries in this area will offer you, at the least, a decent bowl of noodles to slurp down at affordable prices. But Pho An Hoa is a stand-out, a family run home for any weary eater.
As I said before, I hope these reviews and other bits of marginalia will hope to increase your knowledge of the different cultures that have now come to dominate large sections of Charlotte. Even as someone who has taken a lot of time to explore the different immigrant communities that live along Central Avenue, I am always pleasantly surprised at the astonishing diversity of quality dishes offered with sincere and heartwarming hospitality. These kinds of places are the jewels that are proudly ensconced in the Crown that is our beloved Queen City.
Next time: Cuisine Française!! It should be up by Friday.
Be well, eat well, and try to love your neighbors.
-TSM
Between Two Meals 