Traveling throughout Wichita in search of the best bowl of pho

STORY UPDATED DECEMBER 20 2018

Pho (pronounced fuh) is an extremely popular Vietnamese soup consisting of broth, rice noodles, a few herbs, and meat.

Said to have been created in the 1880’s, Vietnamese refugees brought it to the United States in the 70’s. From there it has continued to spread like wildfire with an estimated 3,000 pho restaurants in the country. It’s rumored that 2,999 of them exist in Wichita where there is a big Vietnamese population. I’m on a goal to find out the best one.

While everybody already has their dead set opinion on what is the best pho in Wichita, I want to give every place a fair shot. Even though I’ve been to nearly every restaurant in town serving pho, I wanted to revisit every place this fall and winter so everything is fresh in my mind.

Let’s face it, most lists you find around town covering the best in Wichita are either:

• Incomplete list that don’t include a good majority of the options
• Base it strictly off of Yelp, TripAdvisor, and similar sites to determine their list
• Are actually paid content where the website makes money from the included restaurants
• Lists that include just partners or members of whichever company is putting out the list
• The writer has never stepped foot in those restaurants

Frankly I find that to be misleading and for lack of a better word, trash. So I figured why not just go drop $300+ of my own cash to find out for myself? With cooler weather here, I’ve made it a goal to travel all over the Wichita city limits in search of the best pho. I’m hoping to make it to at least 20-30 restaurants that serve the wonderful bowl which should cover more than a majority of the options in town. Every restaurant will be judged on flavor, quality, price and service. Of course the most important part is the broth and that will weigh heavily in my opinion.

Once I’m done I’ll be publishing a different style of ranking in hopes to help people determine where to get pho. Until then, you can check out the Wichita By E.B. map feature and just filter it by Vietnamese as most of them serve pho.

Here are all the places I have been to so far over the past few months (you can view the pictures on Instagram via #wichitaphotour):

• SpringRo
• Pho Cuong
• Pho Le
• My Tho
• Little Saigon
• Pho Chopstix
• VietNom Nom
• Lemongrass: Taste of Vietnam
• Kimlan
• Nam Viet
• Asian Bistro
• Tuta’s Teriyaki
• Pho Lotus
• Saigon Bistro
• Pho Hien
• Saigon Oriental Restaurant
• Jacky Chan Sushi
• Pho MC
• Thao’s Bistro
• Pho Ong 8
• Charng-An
• Pho Special
• Pho Number One

For what it’s worth I also tried the crawfish pho at Mama Nith’s but have left that out as I’m sticking to just regular authentic as possible pho.

That’s 23 so far and I’m about done. Remember I’m sticking just to the ones in the Wichita city limits. No Maize, No Mulvane, No Andover….just Wichita. What other places should I check out? Post in the comments below.

Happy Dining,
Eddy

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