While growing up, my taste for foreign food was non-exsistent. I was a cheeseburger, hot dog loving type of boy. My first experience with foreign food, as well as most peoples first experience, was Chinese food. I am an avid Chinese/Japanese food loving guy. I especially love South Charleston for its foreign food restaurants, including a Jamaican restaurant and (what I think) the best Chinese/Japanese restaurant in the state, Taste of Asia. While walking around, I noticed that a new Vietnamese restaurant opened, and I decided to give it a taste. I walked into the door without any expectations or anything to compare it to, but I know that my taste buds aren’t jaded, and I know good food when I taste it.
Pho Vinh Long, perhaps the only Vietnamese restaurant in the state, is now located at 610D Street in South Charleston. It is located seconds away from the Indian Burial Mound in South Charleston, right on the corner of a lovely South Charleston intersection with antique and small stores surrounding it. The front of the store is rather bland. It has a large white sign on top with “Pho Vinh Long” written on it, and the front is glass looking in to a dark restaurant. Parking is right in front of the restaurant, and finding a spot to park is never a hard thing to do when going to Pho Vinh Long.
When first entering Pho Vinh long, it doesn’t seem like you are that far from home. The restaurant is simply adorned with linoleum flooring and matching tables and chairs. Palm plants are littered throughout the restaurant and each table has one small plant to itself. The walls are littered with posters depicting Tapioca drinks and their descriptions. The back of the restaurant houses the cash register, a large flat screen TV that plays Vietnamese programs, and a large window that looks into their clean kitchen. Unfortunatly, I didn’t see any of the staff or cooks wearing gloves or hair nets, but I am not a picky guy so that didn’t bother me so much. The bathroom is a single stall room and extremly clean which is definitely a plus for all restaurants. The interior itself doesn’t portray the foreign ancestry present in the food, but once you get a taste of the food, you will realize this is in no way your typical West Virginian restaurant.
The menu presents the entrees numbered and in its traditional Vietnamese name, with ingredients posted on the side. All the ingredients are not listed unfortunately, but the menu covers the main ingredients, like what sort of protein is included. Aside from choosing which entrée you wish to eat, pronouncing the name of what you want is a task within itself, so thankfully the menu is numbered. The price range of the items isn’t bad either, it is a range from 2-13$ for everything on the menu. That price is definitely not bad for a sit down restaurant.
Along with their great food, Pho Vinh Long offers some drinks not common to West Virginia. Tapioca Tea, or more commonly referred to as Boba Tea, is a drink native to Vietnam and is usually offered in fruit flavors. The difference between it and other frozen teas, is that it has things called boba at the bottom of the drink. Boba will probably take some getting used to for most people because it is a slimey, slightly chewy ball of tapioca that comes up through the thick straw. The tea’s are delicious many fruity flavors like honeydew, strawberry, and watermelon.But if you aren’t feeling adventurous, Pho Vinh Long offers the traditional sodas, tea, and other special drinks like flavored carbonated lemonade and coconut milk.
Now I know most of you readers are probably wondering: what ingrediats are used in Vietnamese food? Vietnamese food offers many selections of food. They offer appetizers like spring rolls, which are rolled up cabbage, lettuce, pork, and shrimp and edamae which are soy beans salted and still in the pod. Along with appetizers they offer many soups, but the main ingrediants in the soup are noodles, cilantro, leeks, licorice, lime juice, chicken or steak, and any vegetable they feel like adding. The soup doesn’t taste like any of the traditional food offered in West Virginia. It definitely has its own unique taste, and as a person who doesn’t even like soup, I enjoy their soup immensely. They even offer a beef tendon soup, which is exactly what you think it is. That was, unfortunatly, the worst thing I have had there. The tendons were chewy (which is expected) and with no flavor. But to have only one thing on the menu that I have disliked from what I’ve tried is an accomplishment.
The main dishes are what I really enjoy. All of the dishes are very different in taste, but feature some of the same items. Most main dishes include noodles, some sort of vegetable and some sort of meat, but that’s where the similarities end. Each dish is expertly spiced with spices not found in typical American dishes. Three of my favorites are the lemon breaded chicken over rice with mixed vegetables, grilled pork over rice noodles served with leeks, lettuce, and cilantro, and beef served with a sweet crucnhy brown rice and mixed vegetables. The issue with deciding on what to eat is that the menu is not very descriptive, so its really a random pick and choose situation.
The people who own the store are great. It certainly feels like a mom and pop store, but it is a little bigger than your average mom and pop store. Everyone in the restaurant is related (except for the cook) and their children are there to help you decide what you want. It’s a great atmosphere. You certainly feel welcomed when you go to Pho Vinh Long, and you definitely get a sense of the family atmosphere. Unfortunatly they are a bit under staffed due to it being a family restaurant and how busy they can get, so the time between when you sit down and when you actually get your food and drink can be a bit long. But, I personally do not mind the wait because of the comfortable atmosphere, but I know some will.
Overall, Pho Vinh Long is an excellent addition to the selectin of restaurants Charlestonians have to chose from. It is located nearby and offers food you probably won’t find in the rest of the state. It has a great atmosphere with a welcoming friendly staff and the food is some of the best foreign cuisine I have had. I definitely recommend you try Pho Vinh Long for your next dinner.
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