Pho Bac

Great place for fast and delicious food. The place fills up rather quickly so make sure to get there early.

One of my favorite phở restaurants in Seattle. I always get the Phở Bo here because it comes with everything: steak, brisket, meatballs, tripe, and tendon in a beef broth. I’ve tried their fried rice once before as well, and while it was decent, I’d recommend sticking with the phở.
The interior has nice modern décor and is kept pretty clean. No issues with the service, but you can expect a wait time for larger groups during lunch time. I usually come in around 1pm or so to beat the rush hour and get seated within 10 minutes.
Definitely worth checking this place out.

Although the noodles are sticky all together, which requires some improvement, the broth is amazing. Besides, for $ 8 a large bowl, it is a steal.

Tried this restaurant for the first time today. Really fills up during lunch hour! Had the park banh mi: excellent price, good portion, tasty and juicy pork with great balance of veggies, radish, and a few pieces of jalapeño for a kick. Definitely would get sandwiches to go for a picnic or something. I will have to come back to try the steaming bowls of phở my neighbors ordered.
Overall, had a great experience and hope to come back!

Great phở spot! The broth is amazingly flavorful. They have some really good side dishes too. I recommend the egg rolls: perfect crispiness, super tasty fillings! The Chinese doughnuts is delicious too.
Note: this place is always bustling during weekday lunches. Show up after 12 and be ready to wait in line, often going out the door.

Tom Douglas keeps raving about the Phở Bac on 12^th Ave. I’m rarely in the International District, so I was excited to see this location near Denny Triangle. Due to all the construction in the area, it’s easy to miss the restaurant, but it’s definitely not to be missed. Although the exterior makes it look like a hole in the wall, the interior is spacious and clean. The décor is modern and bright. There are tons of tables available, simply seat yourself and a waiter will come along with water and a menu.
After some difficult decision-​making, I decided to keep it simple and order a beef phở. Thankfully the waiter asked if I wanted all of the ingredients. I left out the tendon and tripe. The phở arrived fairly quickly. It comes with the usual garnishes of bean sprouts, basil, and a lemon wedge. The broth was flavorful. The noodles and beef were good as well. What I didn’t like about the beef was that it was quite fatty and I received quite a bit of inedible pieces as a result. I had very little food that day, so the large really hit the spot. Service was friendly and prompt.

If I could, I would give this place 3.5 stars; using standard rounding rules, this means the restaurant gets four stars. I ordered egg rolls and curry. The egg rolls were perfectly cooked, but they were a bit bland for me. They looked exactly like the egg rolls at a phở shop near my house! However, the ones near my house are tastier (maybe contains more fat?), so that’s where I would dock ½ a star. Maybe I am just being picky, but I would not order the egg rolls again to be honest.
However, the curry was fantastic and reminded me of my Malaysian home. Based on coconut milk, it’s exactly how my mother would make it — chicken, carrots, and potatoes. An added bonus for me was that the chicken was cooked the char siu way — sweetly marinaded and roasted. What a treat! My only complaint was that there isn’t enough rice served with the curry, at least, for this Chinese. I had to ask for another bowl of jasmine rice, and to my knowledge, they didn’t charge me extra, thank goodness. [I have been to an Indian place that charged me extra before — can you believe that??? It was just short-​grain rice, not even jasmine! I digress.]
If I stay in this neighborhood next time, I definitely want to return and try the phở. I asked the cashier if it was common for Vietnamese people to eat curry because the Vietnamese in Houston (have so many, voting ballots must be in Vietnamese) don’t really serve it. When you go to a phở shop in Houston, you will never see curry like this on the menu. The cashier confirmed that Vietnamese people only eat curry on special occasions and holidays, but the restaurant chose to serve anyway. It was absolutely delicious, and I look forward to returning!

Damn good Phở !!
Large bowl with steak was big, rich and flavorful.
The service was very quick and efficient.
They take the order at the table with an iPad and you swipe your card in the same iPad when you’re finished.
You’re in and out very fast…
Excellent food and experience. Thank you…
I’ll be back.

The Phở here is delicious – 5 stars. Great, flavorful broth and all the trimmings.
But I’m rating them 4 stars because two of the five times we’ve come, they’ve been out of vegetarian broth.

I was surprised how good the food was here. I have recently moved here from LA and heard good Vietnamese food is hard to come by in Seattle. This place is quite trendy with cool pictures and magazine covers framed on the wall.
The broth in the phở was very flavorful. The noodles and the beef was very good. I also really liked the vermicelli with pork and egg rolls. It comes with a bed of shredded lettuce. My only wish is that there was cucumbers and pickled carrots in the bowl like they have it at home.

I love this place.

I had my first phở and banh mi here and it was too good and delicious. Food felt really fresh and light. They serve food in large proportions. The ambience was small and it was different setting with brick walls. Great food at such an affordable price

Coming from Orange County/​LA, cheap simple phở is easy to come by. Up here in downtown Seattle, not so much. I was craving phở, and a Unilocal search pulled up this spot. I have been here twice now, and have left both time satisfied and cravings satisfied.
I have ordered:
— a small bowl of their phở (hold the tripe)
— prawn spring rolls
— coconut juice (fresh chunks of coconut meat floating in it, YUM!)
Prices are a dollar or two more than your normal $ 5 – 6 a bowl place, but it is downtown. If you are eating there, you seat yourself and they take your order. Food comes quick here, fast service.

Phở so yum! Phở Bac is a solid Vietnamese eatery in Seattle, right downtown. With a long layover at Sea-​Tac, I figure I’d roll dice on the train and try my luck with the food scene near the Marmalade stop. Sure enough, I came across Phở Bac even with lots of construction in the foreground. For under $ 10 you can eat a huge bowl of warm beef on top of scallions, carrots, fresh cucumbers, and dreamy white noodles. This combination with sriracha is killer! That, or the hoisin sauce. The nice people that worked here let me take my time reviewing the menu and checking on me to refill my drink. Since it was raining and I was traveling with a roll carry on bag, they offered extra napkins and sent me on my way after eating and catching my breath. This is a nice restaurant with great food. Oh, and I made it back to Sea-​Tac belly full with luck on my side! Woo!

I haven’t eaten at many Phở places — but we were nicely surprised with our meal here.
The prices are quite reasonable for food downtown — and the flavors are really good.
The menu is easy enough to read — and 3 of us pigged out for about $ 40.
The only thing I would of like to know is that the Vermicelli Phở I ordered wasn’t a hot/​warm dish.
The egg/​spring rolls are incredible!

Thank goodness I live by this new place. I likely get the phở at least one time weekly. Adore the feeling, and great coffee too!

Cheap! Delicious! Try it!
I like to say I’m starting to develop a real palate for Vietnamese cuisine. I absolutely love this type of food. Well, Phở Bac, proved to be our savior for a few meals and it was conveniently located across the street from our illustrious hotel. The two meals we ended up having there were very good, yet different from what I’m used to in SD. One morning for breakfast we ordered traditional phở, which was quite tasty. The broth had a good deep bold flavor and the meat was quality. Other than that, the veggies were fresh and crisp and I had no complaints. It was an amazing hot refreshing bowl of phở on a cold Seattle morning. Our second meal was banh mi thit nuong to-​go for our train ride to the airport. It was quite different than what I’m used to in SD because of the generous meat portions they stuffed in this giant sandwich. It was delicious, just had a different flavor all around. The one thing I did notice was the spicy ass jalapeño inside. I’ve never burnt my face off so bad from a single sliver of a jalapeño. Shit burned!!! But yes, very good restaurant. I wish them the best.

It was probably the cleanest, hippest, phở restaurant I’ve been to ever but the one time I went it took forever for my table to get our food.
I ordered a Banh Mi with pork in it and 15 mins later they came back telling me that they ran out of pork and if I wanted any other meat instead. I went with chicken, and it understand at the end of the day at a popular restaurant you sometimes run out of popular dishes. This is all fine, except it took about 20 mins before our food came out.
Maybe I went on an off day but the service was not up to par.

Pretty good for Seattle… at first I was like bleeh, but as I ate more and more of it, I realize it wasn’t bad. I just needed to mix it up a bit and let the noodles soak into broth! The meat was very lean and not fatty at all, which we really like.
We came in and it was pretty empty. Place is very modern and cool looking for a phở place. They give you a small place of veggies but you can ask for more. We also got some pork banh mi. It wasn’t traditional but really good. The jalapeños were extremely hot, be careful as you might get a super hot one like we did!

Some of the best #Phở in the states &outside of Vietnam‼ Wow‼ #Vietnamesefood #seattle The broth is to die for‼ What makes Phở magical and an amazing experience is when you look at a bowl of Great phở the broth seems like it’s no big deal just a golden broth & who cares, certainly nothing noticeable‼ Then when you take your first spoonful of that delicious golden elixir in your mouth it just goes POW, BOOM, — ORGASM The amazing flavor is UNEXPECTEDLY complex‼ Great Phở‼

What a surprise. Seriously.
BF and I were in downtown Seattle up until 3am doing god knows what with our friends (hint: lots of booze). Woke up the next morning feeling… well, hung over. We Unilocaled the nearest «hot soup» spot, and found that Phở Bac was very close to our hotel!
Can I say «hole in the wall»? I almost feel weird calling it that because the interior is nothing that one would expect a hole in the wall to be like, or a PHO restaurant to be like. A little posh, kinda trendy, and surprisingly clean. But the location of the restaurant definitely exudes a «hole in the wall» experience. Service was quick and friendly, nothing to write home about.
But the food definitely hit the spot. Not only were we hung over, but the both of us were hunngggrry. I got a small brisket phở with extra meat and an order of fried egg rolls. BF got a small everything phở and a chicken banh mi sandwich. We killed it. all of it. So good. what stood out about the food here was that the broth was very «clean» tasting; if that makes any sense at all. Usually when I go eat phở, I can get a hint or 2 of the grease in their broth; but not here. Also, the brisket was very hearty with little to no fat. I felt very satiated just by their brisket alone.
Anyways, TGFP (thank god for phở). and phở bac was the answer to our prayers Saturday morning!

[Dine-​In experience] This was definitely a hole-​in-​the-​wall type of place hands down. I love the phở here as it has a bit of the sweeter broth and really great ingredients. I like that they had other options on their menu for a reasonable price and would recommend this place to anyone craving phở in the Seattle area.
Service was friendly and fast. I was running late from meeting a friend but they were very helpful once we were ready to order. Traditional cashier system when it comes to paying and having guests visit the counter to pay.
Dishes ordered: Phở Bo

I’m in Seattle a lot for work, and every time I stay at the Springhill Suites across the street, I make sure to eat at Phở Bac at least once. I get the phở bo every time. There’s just something about this phở broth that makes it flat-​out better than all other phở I’ve ever had. Combine that with the generous amount of meat you get and Chinese donuts ($ 2 extra) to soak up the leftover broth, and you end up with my favorite bowl of phở. Easily five stars.

I went on a phở bender last week, visiting three phở shops in a period of seven days.
Ranked in order of best to worst are:
–Phở Cyclo Café (Capitol Hill)
–Phở Bac
–Phở Than Bros (Capitol Hill)
Now, I’m going to take Phở Than Bros out of the mix here because it was far inferior to Phở Cyclo Café and Phở Bac. So, comparing Phở Cyclo Café and Phở Bac…
–The broth at Phở Cyclo Café was better.
–The phở at Phở Cyclo Café contained more meat.
–The venue and cleanliness of Phở Bac was far superior.
Having seen Phở Bac featured on the local news, I for sure thought it would be the bomb but it wasn’t. It was good but not great. I made a mistake getting meatballs in my phở which I detest so that put me off on a bit. On-​street parking is plentiful mid-​day on a Saturday but I’m not sure how plentiful it would be at other times of the day. The space is clean with exposed brick and cute seating.
The bottom line is if you want great phở, then I’d recommend Phở Cyclo Café but get it to-​go (I repeat, to-​go!). If you want good phở to dine-​in, then head over to Phở Bac.

Came in before an evening event. They were out of vegetarian broth for the Phở. Sounds like a common occurrence from what the very nice guy behind the counter said. They make broth once a day in the morning and once they sell out that’s it.
Place is clean. I thought you ordered at the counter but you take a seat and are served. Pretty big place for just one person so not sure how quick service would be. However the guy was always running and was nice. I’d come back for lunch if I was in the area.

So many phở places in Seattle and phở bac is definitely in the top. It is clean, fast, inexpensive and delicious.
The place gets really busy during lunch time but is still usually a short wait. The phở is great. The bun dishes uses a rounder type of noodles but still great. The rice dishes are good too but not my favorite. A lot of people seem to like the bahn mi here and it is super cheap. I’m not a huge fan of bahn mi so I have never tried it.
Everything comes out really fast so things are definitely premade and assembled quickly but I haven’t had a problem with the food. Come here for a quick and delicious lunch!

First Phở experience leaves me wanting MO!
Cute interior ! Yellow seats and brick walls with modern art .
You are seated and a server will take your order. It looks like people can pretty much sit where ever they want. They have water, soda and Asian beers .
The menu is labeled clearly with descriptions and prices so if your a first timer like me, you can navigate yourself .
They have meat and vegetarian options .
There were two sauces on the table (a spicy flaked pepper sauce and a teriyaki fish sauce thing, as well as the classic Sriracha).
Some random things that stuck out to me ;
They have small and large sizes for the PHO soup bowls .
They also have :
Rice dishes
Rice noodle dishes
Appetizer /​small sharing things available: egg rolls, spring rolls etc that come in 2 – 3 servings for about $ 3
I had a large PHO bowl with everything, a chicken sandwich, egg rolls and a soda for about $ 19. Great prices and great portions .
You can tell everything is fresh because it’s not over seasoned and not loaded with salt !
If I’m ever back in the area I would come back !

Great flavor and good value. The exterior looks like a typical hole in the wall Phở place, but inside is a more upscale hip vibe and they serve several craft beers. Not your typical phở joint.
We arrived at around 11:30 on a week day and were really lucky to get a seat. It was jam –packed 5 minutes later. Go early or late to avoid the noon hour.
Phở was hot and flavorful, but missing the star anise/​spicy umami undertone I was looking for so it gets a ⁴⁄₅.
Bahn mi was also fresh and tasty, but wasn’t served with mayo or any sauce/​moisture on the bread at all. Easily remedied with a little plum sauce and sriracha, but I missed the mayo. ⁴⁄₅.

Service was good — friendly, attentive, and welcoming. Too bad the food wasn’t better. The food was just ok. The spring rolls, summer roll, phở, and pork banh mi were all just ok. I probably liked the banh mi best.
Not worth making a special trip, but if you’re in the area and want some standard food, then it’s an ok choice.

Phở Bac is a hip Vietnamese spot that offers a simple menu with strong vegetarian options. It seems to be a solid lunch option for the people that work nearby. You can just tell by the size and orientation of the tables that people this place has strong lunch game.
I was visiting Seattle for the week and was looking for some good Vietnamese food that wouldn’t take me right through the city’s traffic. My friend and I settled on Phở Bac. Small warning: They get their bread daily, and if you get there too early, you won’t be able to order a banh mi sandwich.
I had the vegetarian phở and the tofu spring rolls. The tofu spring rolls were pretty tasty, but the peanut sauce was a bit off. I’m not sure if the texture threw me off, but it felt kind of grainy. Either way, I switched to sriracha and enjoyed the tofu spring rolls.
The vegetarian phở was excellent. I kind of struggle with the idea of textured tofu in a dish like this, but I was a huge fan of the broccoli. The real test of great phở is the broth. This is tough to do for vegetarian phở, but Phở Bac gets it right. My small plate lacked mint and only had a single slice of jalapeño, but I don’t really eat mint with phở anyway.
I’d come back to Phở Bac if I was in the area again and craving Vietnamese food.

Rule #1 of Asian joints — make sure you’re in the minority as a white guy (check). Rule #2 — make sure the owners/​chef are from that Asian country (check). Rule #3 — make sure the place is busy (check).
This place is exactly as advertised. Strong Phở and excellent Bahn mi served quickly and super cheap. They’ve got a winner here.

«Vietnamese cuisine immediately served and with a smile.»
Do not be shocked to see this restaurant packed during the lunch hours. Servers expertly multi-​tasking and speed walking through the aisle ways with menus and water pitchers firmly clutched in their hands. Bowls of hot soup are efficiently served steaming with fresh plates of herbs and condiments. It doesn’t matter how busy the place becomes there are two things that remain consistent, everyone always smiles and the food is always good.
The layout of the restaurant allows for large crowd seating and posters of events around Seattle adorn the walls. Cans of Café Du Mont coffees are expertly stacked behind the counter and a cake stand full of cream puffs is strategically place next to the cashier as a reminder that dessert does not have to be expensive and heavy.
I tried their beef fried rice with broccoli, pork banh mi, vermicelli bowl with grilled pork and egg roll, and cream puffs. The beef fried rice was very well flavored and the meat and broccoli were tender. The vermicelli bowl was filling and the amount of grilled pork and egg rolls were more than what other places provide. The cream puffs are perfectly light and the custard filling was proportionate. The banh mi was simply delightful. The bread had a crispy exterior and light on the inside. The meat was still warm as if recent pulled from the grill. Their fantastic service and great food is a good recipe in creating regulars. This place certainly knows how to serve food during the lunch hour rush.

Really good phở here! Also nice portions and good price. I really enjoyed my bowl of phở for lunch — great ingredients and tasty soup! My friend had the Bahn Mi and she loved it too. The line can get long though, so don’t come during lunch rush hours.
PROS: Fast service, delicious food
CONS: Can be a long wait

Phở is one of those dishes that a lot of people don’t get. «Noodles and soup?» is what my friend says. But Phở Bac is able to convert even the grumpiest of naysayers into phở lovers.
Great for lunch, you order at the counter and they note where you sit. A few minutes later and a giant steaming bowl of phở arrives. A small plate with bean sprouts, jalapeño, lime slice, and Thai basil accompanies the main bowl. Personally, I adorn my bowl with the basil and a squirt of the lime, and a small dollop of hoisin (brown sauce at the table).
The great part of Phở Bac is their deeply flavored broth, made by simmering bones for hours on end. The variety of cuts of meat is great too. I marveled at brisket, flank, tendon, and tripe in my bowl. Noodles are traditional flat rice noodles, perfectly cooked (not al dente, because phở noodles are meant to cook completely).

The broth is really flavorful.
The banh mi bread is soft but crunchy, meat is savory and delish.
Open early (9am) for those recovering from a bad night out.
The ideal phở joint. Delicious, convenient, and fairly priced for the quality. I highly recommend.

Best bowl of phở I’ve ever had. The broth was not too heavy or light, the noodles had the perfect texture, and the protein wasn’t too fatty which I prefer.
The egg rolls were decent, but the star of the show was definitely dat PHO.
The design of this place is definitely different from the usual Vietnamese restaurant, it is more modern. so I did not expect the phở to be THAT good.
Please excuse the lack of cilantro in my picture, I am a #cilantrohater unless I’m eating Mexican food.