Pho Garden – Rio Rancho, New Mexico

NOTE:  In the first few introductory paragraphs below I describe an encounter that took place between two friends.  Though that encounter took place several years ago, it perfectly  illustrates the idealogical divide that has torn our great nation apart.

It should have been a point-counterpoint debate for the ages. My ideologically opposed and perpetually squabbling friends Carlos and Hien were arguing about the concept of American exceptionalism. Carlos took the Reaganesque position that America is the shining city on a hill. “Everything about America is great,” he proclaimed. “We have the highest standard of living and pretty much the best of everything.” Hien mirrored Obama’s stance that America does not have exclusivity in believing itself to be exceptional. Much like the chasm that divides Congress, neither disputant would concede a modicum of merit in the other’s argument. When it seemed as if this argument would end in another stalemate, Hien pulled out his trump (no, not another reference to a President) card.

“There’s one thing about America that isn’t exceptional,” he declared. “American fast food is terrible.” With that point having been made, Carlos, long an advocate of independent mom-and-pop eateries, capitulated. True to form, they then began an argument as to which American fast food franchise is the worse. Carlos singled out Taco Bell as a piteous parody of the Mexican and New Mexican food on which he was raised and in which he takes so much pride. Hien wasn’t as singularly focused in his criticism. In his estimation, all American fast food is terrible. “It’s unhealthy, high in saturated fats and calories and it tastes awful,” he argued. Having just recently returned from his native Vietnam, Hien then made his case by boasting about how poorly American fast food has been received in his homeland.

“In my hometown of Ho Chi Minh City (the largest city in Vietnam with a population of about ten-million), you won’t find a McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s or KFC in every corner,” he began. “Everyone went to McDonald’s when it first opened (in 2014) because we’d heard and read so much about it, but curiosity quickly faded. Most of the menu features fried, high-fat, high-calorie foods. McDonald’s never incorporated local flavors and healthy ingredients into their food. Not only that, but you can get a banh mi for under two dollars and it’s much fresher, healthier and infinitely more delicious than a Big Mac.” Since that first McDonald’s launched in Vietnam, only fourteen others have opened. That’s hardly taking the country by storm. Similarly, Burger King has had to close several of its outlets as have other chains which dominate the American fast food market.

Contrast the poor performance of American fast food in Vietnam with the widespread acceptance and burgeoning popularity of Vietnamese food across the fruited plain and you have what might be termed as a culinary trade imbalance. America certainly got the better end of that deal. The Institute for Immigration Research estimated there were 8,900 Vietnamese restaurants in the United States as of 2014, and that number has been steadily increasing. Vietnamese restaurants across the fruited plain serve not only a Vietnamese-American community of almost two-million people, but an increasing numbers of Americans from all ethnic backgrounds. It seems the only people who don’t like Vietnamese cuisine are those who haven’t tried it.

Perhaps the one Vietnamese dish which has gained the most sweeping mainstream acceptance is pho, the traditional, slow-cooked soup many of us already consider a comfort food staple. Culinary cognoscenti believe pho could someday soon follow the path of pizza (Italian), tacos (Mexican), gyros (Greece) and sushi (Japanese) as ethnic foods that have become part of the fruited plain’s mainstream culture. When, not if, pho does ascend to this rarefied air, we can thank such restaurants as Rio Rancho’s Pho Garden for having made pho and other Vietnamese culinary delights so accessible and so delicious.

Pho Garden opened its doors in November, 2017, taking over the spot vacated by Pizza 9 in a small strip mall just recessed off Rio Grande Blvd. Pho Garden is Rio Rancho’s fourth Vietnamese restaurant. My friend Hien suggests perhaps the city should change its nickname from “City of Vision” to “City of Vietnamese Restaurants,” indicating most of the lettering is already in place. The restaurant is fairly small with fewer than a dozen tables in near personal space proximity. Step inside and you’ll likely be greeted by Khan, the effusive owner and a familiar face if you’ve frequented Que Huong, his previous Duke City restaurant venture.

Unlike at Que Huong and other Duke City Vietnamese restaurants with their compendium-like, multi-page menus (novels), Pho Garden’s menu is limited if you consider 75 items (not counting beverages) to be limited. There’s nothing out of the ordinary in terms of how the menu is organized: appetizers, sandwiches (banh mi), beef-rice noodle soup (pho), Udon-style noodle, noodle bowl, rice dishes and house specialties. Beverages include the usual suspects including durian shakes. The smaller menu is befitting a small kitchen, but it doesn’t translate to smaller portions. Steaming bowls of pho ferried to your table are roughly the size of a swimming pool.

18 October 2024:  Pho Garden is one of very few remaining Vietnamese restaurants in the metropolitan area to offer durian shakes.  Durian, as you’ve read about (probably ad nauseam) on this blog is considered the world’s stinkiest fruit.  Not surprisingly, it’s a fruit I’ve loved from first bite.  That’s something not even Andrew Zimmern can say; he can’t stand durian.  My Kim doesn’t even want to be at the same table as me when I order it.  I found myself dismayed at the durian shake served to me at Pho Garden.  It tasted like a very sweet vanilla shake.  Our server admitted the shake was made from durian powder.  “Travesty!”  I thought to myself.  “How can any respectable Vietnamese serve this dreck?”  It was so uncharacteristically inoffensive that my Kim polished it off after I nearly spit out my first sip.

6 January 2018: My Kim calls Vietnamese grilled beef rolls wrapped in grape leaf, a Vietnamese specialty offered at Pho Garden, “Vietnamese dolmas.” That there are similarities between the Greek dolma and the Vietnamese grape leaf rolls often surprises people. What shouldn’t surprise anyone is that these starter favorites are an absolutely delicious way to begin a meal at a Vietnamese restaurants. Entirely different than Greek dolmades which are more often stuffed with rice and herbs, Pho Garden’s version features the anise, lemon grass and cinnamon blessed grilled beef encased in a small, tightly wrapped, cigar shaped grape leaf served with a sweet, spicy and tangy dipping sauce. They’re served five to an order.

6 January 2018: As a naïve child, I probably learned as much about the world from watching Gilligan’s Island as I did in some of my grade school classes. Gilligan’s Island taught me about the versatility of papaya, a fruit theretofore unavailable in Northern New Mexico. Professor Roy Hinkley used glycerol from papaya seeds as an ingredient in a bomb. He used ferric nitrate from papaya root to create an antidote for a deadly mosquito bite. What Gilligan’s Island never taught me is how wonderfully delicious papaya salad is. It’s become one of my very favorite starters in Vietnamese and Thai restaurants. Pho Garden’s version is terrific with sweet, savory, tangy and piquant notes tantalizing and titillating our taste buds. We ordered the version with chicken on which cold-cut type chicken strips were laid out atop the salad with crushed peanuts forming a crown of sorts.

6 January 2018: When you visit a restaurant whose name includes the name of the dish in which it ostensibly specializes, you’ve got to have that dish. While ordering pho at the Pho Garden was a no-brainer, deciding which of the more than thirty pho options to order was a much greater challenge. My Kim surprised me by ordering the rare steak and well done steak noodle pho. Before she captured my heart there’s no way she would have ordered something so primal sounding as rare steak. In truth, the thinly sliced steak doesn’t remain rare for long. It actually cooks within the steaming beef broth. And what a broth it is. It’s rich, delicious and as all great pho should, its presence is preceded by its aroma.

6 January 2018: My first choice would have been the spicy Hue style noodle soup, but apparently it’s the favorite of other diners as there was none to be had. You could hardly call the combination beef noodle soup (rare steak, well done steak, beef tendon, tripe and beef meatball) a consolation price. It’s a carnivore’s choice with meats of varying textures and flavors. Beef tendon and tripe are among my favorite pho meats, but it was the beef meatball with its assertive seasoning that garnered most attention. Served alongside the pho is a plate replete with fresh bean sprouts, cilantro, basil, jalapeños and lime.

10 November 2018:  Mention “meatballs” and your mind might conjure images of golf ball-sized orbs slathered in sauce or gravy.  If you’re an aficionado of Vietnamese cuisine, perhaps the term “meatballs” invokes images of marble-sized orbs, also slathered in sauce.  If, however, you order grilled meatball rolls at a Vietnamese restaurant, meatballs might mean something else altogether.  At least that’s the case at Pho Garden where a translucent rice paper wrappers encase cilantro, vermicelli, basil and hemispherical shaped meatballs with a texture more akin to pepperoni though much thicker.  Mind you, we’re not complaining.  We were just surprised.  A more pleasant surprise is how good they taste when dipped into the accompanying thick peanut sauce.

10 November 2018: Technically, the term Vietnamese deep-fried “egg rolls” is a misnomer because they’re not made with Cantonese egg roll skins.  In fact, there’s nothing “eggy” about Vietnamese egg rolls.  Additionally “cha gio,” the Vietnamese term for egg rolls actually translates to “imperial rolls.”  By any other name, you’ve got to call them delicious.  Pho Garden offers its deep-fried egg rolls at two per order though you might be well-advised to place two orders.  Crispy, cylindrical-shaped deep-fried rolls stuffed with minced pork, onions and mushrooms all minced so finely that it’s hard to say where one ingredient stops and another starts.  It’s a melding of filler, all good, especially when dipped into the accompanying fish sauce.

10 November 2018: The Food Republic, an online site which “explores the culture of food through stories, interviews, global conversations, and experiences, published a rather bold article entitled: “Move over pho!  Bon Bo Hue is the Vietnamese soup you need to know about.” While some may consider such a proclamation heretical, Food Republic makes a very good case for the soup’s properties: “soulful and rich and delicious and complex…spicier than most Vietnamese soups.”  In other words, it’s got personality.  Contrast that with pho which tends to be more “one note,” with a predictable “sameness” from one Vietnamese restaurant to another.  That’s not The Food Republic talking.  That’s an observation your humble blogger made some twenty years ago and I stick to it today.  Don’t misconstrue my meaning.  I love pho, but prefer my taste buds titillated.

10 November 2018:  When asked where Albuquerque’s best pho is served, I invariably ask why they would want bland when they can have bold, ordinary when they can have extraordinary, boring when they can have memorable and steer them toward the spicy beef stew at Cafe Dalat and the spicy lemongrass beef noodle soup (Hue-style) from Pho Linh.  Now these are soups!  Bold, flavorful, spicy, hearty and as comforting as pho.  The spicy Hue-style noodle soup is in much the same vein: beef bones (meat attached),  lemongrass, annatto (achiote), congealed pig’s blood, spices and seasonings and tangle of herbs on the side.  It’s not quite as spicy as its counterpart at Pho Linh, but it’s better than the aforementioned pho we’ve had.

18 October 2024: Of all the Vietnamese entrees to which we’ve introduced novitiates, the most universally beloved is grilled pork.  Grilled pork is marinated with the sweet spices of anise and cinnamon to create an olfactory treasure that dances on your taste buds.   One of the best ways to have grilled pork is with rice vermicelli which sometimes doesn’t really resemble noodles at all.  In fact, the way the vermicelli is served at Pho Garden looks more like a one large rice noodle sheet in a cheesecloth pattern.  The grilled pork is topped with crushed peanuts and scallions.  It’s traditional to wrap the pork in the vermicelli noodles then dip them in Pho Garden’s pleasantly piquant fish sauce.  If freshness has a flavor, it’s something like this dish.

18 October 2024:  While other Vietnamese restaurants in the metropolitan area offer dishes showcasing the deliciousness of duck, Pho Garden offers a dish you probably won’t find anywhere else: vermicelli with duck and bamboo soup.  Honestly, it sounds better than it actually is.  I rarely “doctor” any dish so as to experience what the chef wants me to taste, but I had to add two portions of fish sauce to remove the blandness of the soup.  The duck itself was reminiscent of pork hock some restaurants serve with bun bo Hue.  It had to be carefully extricated from both bone and fat.

The very name Pho Garden has connotations of freshness and deliciousness and indeed, this is one restaurant that lives up to its names. It’s so good my friends Carlos and Hien might not find anything about it to warrant an argument.

Pho Garden
1751 Rio Rancho Blvd, S.E., Suite 106
Rio Rancho, New Mexico
(505) 404-0774
Web Site | Facebook Page
LATEST VISIT: 18 October 2024
1st VISIT: 6 January 2018
# OF VISITS: 3
RATING: 20
COST: $$
BEST BET: Combination Beef Noodle Soup, Rare Steak & Well Done Noodle Soup, Grilled Beef Rolls with Grape Leaf, Papaya Salad with Chicken, Spicy Hue Style Noodle Soup, Deep Fried Egg Rolls, Grilled Meatball Rolls, Sesame Duck Soup
RESTAURANT REVIEW #1019