Pho 79

Pho 79 is famous – cited by the James Beard Foundation and recipient of Michelin’s Bib Gourmand – because it was very early to serving a Vietnamese dish that has become ubiquitous across California and fairly well-known elsewhere in the United States: pho soup. The undeniably compelling combination of a beef broth with rice noodles, vegetables, herbs, and generally various cuts of beef was essentially unknown in the U.S. when Vietnamese refugees began arriving in what has since become known as Little Saigon, bringing pho recipes with them. Named for the year most of the owners’ family arrived here, Pho 79 opened in 1982.

At this point, there are countless restaurants serving pho in Orange County, many of whom have discarded any concept of a secret family recipe in favor of strategically tweaking fat, garlic oil, spice, and meat levels to achieve certain thicknesses and intensities of broth. Pho 79’s secret is apparently in using oxtail, and by comparison with other top pho places here, its broth is legitimately very good, and the other ingredients are all fresh. We wouldn’t call the result life-changing, or even the best available locally, but it’s better than can be had at pretty much any place that’s not actively competing on broth and meat quality.