Súp Noodle Bar

In recent years, we’ve grown to admire Kei Concepts restaurants: from Nep Cafe to Ini Ristorante and Vox Kitchen, the Vietnamese-owned but pan-Asian-focused group has distinguished its restaurants from thousands of other Orange County options by elevating quality, presentation, and service. With locations in Buena Park and Irvine, Súp Noodle Bar (pronounced Soup) is somewhat different from the rest, combining pho soups – Súp’s only type of soup – with a menu that otherwise resembles Vox’s.

You can choose from a dozen different pho variations, but two key facts underlie all of them: Their 48-hour-cooked beef bone broth is a rich and delicious base, and you can get as many noodle refills as you want, regardless of which bowl you select. So whether you’re ordering the nearly $16 beef belly pho or nearly $20 Anthony Bourdain version with smoky garlic filet mignon, you can order nothing else and walk out with a full belly.

Our favorite is the “shaken” version of the Combination Pho, which like the Bourdain adds red onions, garlic scallions, and smoky bone marrow oil to the soup, but has bone-in short rib, beef belly, tendon, brisket, and meatballs as meats. While untraditional, it’s possibly the best bowl of pho in the county – even better than the wagyu bowl at Pho Akaushi. That said, you can’t go wrong with any of the options.